Cypher-talker: Tag strings for neo4j

Zero dependencies and zero pain

Tired of writing neo4j queries like this?

s.run('MERGE (alice:Person {name : $nameParam, age : $ageParam})', {
    nameParam: 'Alice',
    ageParam: 21
})

Try cypher-talker to write like this:

import t from 'cypher-talker'

s.run(...t`MERGE (alice:Person {name : ${'Alice'}, age : ${21})`)

Or even like this:

import t from 'cypher-talker'

const alice = {name: 'Alice', age: 21}
s.run(...t`MERGE (alice:Person ${t(alice)})`)

It converts template strings to real queries with params, primitives and objects to query variables, allows nested queries and even has special (yet simple) syntax for inlining and object spread.

It just works.

Installation

Just run npm i cypher-talker or pnpm i cypher-talker or yarn add cypher-talker, whatever you like.

Then use it. It ships with single default export.

import t from 'cypher-talker'
// or 
const t = require('cypher-talker')

It ships both with CommonJS and ESM packages, runs in latest browsers and NodeJS.

It even should work with Deno. It is single-module package (use index.mjs)

Variables

Just use variables. Cypher-talker will extract them. Variables come in incremental order, v0, then v1, v2 and so on.

const q = t`hello ${'world'}`
console.log([...q]) // ['hello $v0', {v0: 'world'}]

Nested queries

If you need to re-use query parts, just inline them. No nesting limits.

const q1 = t`hello`
const q2 = t`${q1} world`
console.log([...q2]) // ['hello world', {}]

Spreading the object

Sometimes you want to pass object where you cannot really pass variable - like into the pattern-matching query.

Use t() instead.

const q = t`${t({hello: 'world'})}`
console.log([...q]) // ['hello: $v0', {v0: 'world'}]

How it works

t is a overloaded function that handles

• template strings syntax
• single object argument
• or single string argument

and always returning an iterable object of 2 items: resulting query and vars arg. See tests for detailed examples.