1. Neo4j Graph Database
From PHP
February 28, 2013
Confoo 2013, Montréal

2. How I got here
R.I.P.
Had a short life, but left before it was too late.

3. Why Neo4j?
● Simple set-up
● Well documented
● Open source
● ... with “Enterprise” support
● Not purely academic

4. What is a graph database?
A database providing persistance for graphs.

5. Ok, but what is a graph?

6. Ok, but what is a graph?

7. Neo4j
Out of the Box
Data: http://www.neo4j.org/develop/example_data

8. Gremlin
● Provides control over the traversal
algorithm
● Pipe & Filter – similar to jQuery
● Works across different graph databases
● Based on Groovy (limited to Java)

9. Gremlin
g.v(1)
.in('COMPANION_OF')
.out('APPEARED_IN')
.has('title', "The Doctor's Daughter")
.back(2)

10. Gremlin
● Can modify the graph
● Allows to run arbitrary code
● Implementation not as stable in Neo4j

11. Cypher
START doctor = node(1)
MATCH
doctor <-[:COMPANION_OF]- companion,
companion -[:APPEARED_IN]-> episode
WHERE
episode.title = "The Doctor's Daughter"
RETURN companion, companion.character

12. Enough theory
Neo4j in action

13. REST API
● JSON over HTTP
● Well supported
● Used by the web admin
● Meaningful work requires many HTTP
requests
● http://docs.neo4j.org/chunked/stable/rest-api.html

14. everyman/neo4jphp
● Complete? REST API implementation
● Basic wrappers for all components
● https://github.com/jadell/neo4jphp/wiki

15. everyman/neo4jphp
Pros: Cons:
● Well maintained ● Tedious API
● Good ● Error-prone
documentation ● Low-level
● Predictable
behavior

16. hirevoice/neo4jphp-ogm
● Bias: I am the author
● Inspired by Doctrine
● Uses annotations on classes
● Built on top of everyman/neo4jphp
● https://github.com/lphuberdeau/Neo4j-PHP-OGM

17. hirevoice/neo4jphp-ogm
Pros: Cons:
● Fast (bulk operations) ● Supported by me
● Feels like Doctrine ● Skim
● Benefits from type documentation
checking ● Implementation still
● Well tested partial
● Bundles and
modules available
(many)

18. Others
● neoxygen/updown
● neoxygen/neox
● neoxygen/GraphQuest

19. Demo
Code
https://github.com/lphuberdeau/confoo-demo

20. Contact
Louis-Philippe Huberdeau
lp@huberdeau.info