Load GEXF (Graph Exchange XML Format)

Many existing applications and data integrations use GEXF to describes a graph with nodes and edges. For further information, you should visit the official documentation.

It is possible to load or import nodes and relationship from a GEXF file with the procedures apoc.load.gexf and apoc.import.gexf. You need to:

provide a path to a GEXF file
provide configuration (optional)

The apoc.import.gexf read as the apoc.load.gexf but also create nodes and relationships in Neo4j.

For reading from files you’ll have to enable the config option:

apoc.import.file.enabled=true

By default file paths are global, for paths relative to the import directory set:

apoc.import.file.use_neo4j_config=true

Examples for apoc.load.gexf

load.gexf

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gexf version="1.2">
  <graph defaultedgetype="directed">
    <nodes>
      <node foo="bar">
        <attvalues>
          <attvalue for="0" value="http://gephi.org"/>
        </attvalues>
      </node>
    </nodes>
  </graph>
</gexf>

CALL apoc.load.gexf('load.gexf')

Table 1. Results
value
{_type: gexf, _children: [{_type: graph, defaultedgetype: directed, _children: [{_type: nodes, _children: [{_type: node, _children: [{_type: attvalues, _children: [{_type: attvalue, for: 0, value: http://gephi.org}]}], foo: bar}]}]}], version: 1.2}

Examples for apoc.import.gexf

Besides the file you can pass in a config map:

Table 2. Config parameters
name	type	default	description
readLabels	Boolean	false	Creates node labels based on the value in the `labels` property of `node` elements
defaultRelationshipType	String	RELATED	The default relationship type to use if none is specified in the GraphML file
storeNodeIds	Boolean	false	store the `id` property of `node` elements
batchSize	Integer	20000	The number of elements to process per transaction
compression	`Enum[NONE, BYTES, GZIP, BZIP2, DEFLATE, BLOCK_LZ4, FRAMED_SNAPPY]`	`null`	Allow taking binary data, either not compressed (value: `NONE`) or compressed (other values)
source	Map<String,String>	Empty map	See `source / target config` parameter below
target	Map<String,String>	Empty map	See `source / target config` parameter below See the Binary file example

With the following file will be created:

1 node with label Gephi
2 nodes with label Webatlas
1 node with label RTGI
1 node with label BarabasiLab
6 relationships of kind KNOWS
1 relationship of kind HAS_TICKET
1 relationship of kind BAZ

data.gexf

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gexf xmlns="http://gexf.net/1.3" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://gexf.net/1.3 http://gexf.net/1.3/gexf.xsd" version="1.2">
  <meta lastmodifieddate="2009-03-20">
    <creator>Gephi.org</creator>
    <description>A Web network</description>
  </meta>
  <graph defaultedgetype="directed">
    <attributes class="node">
      <attribute id="0" title="url" type="string"/>
      <attribute id="room" title="room" type="integer"/>
      <attribute id="projects" title="projects" type="long"/>
      <attribute id="price" title="price" type="double"/>
      <attribute id="1" title="indegree" type="float"/>
      <attribute id="members" title="members" type="liststring"/>
      <attribute id="pins" title="pins" type="listboolean"/>
      <attribute id="2" title="frog" type="boolean">
        <default>true</default>
      </attribute>
    </attributes>
    <attributes class="edge">
      <attribute id="score" title="score" type="float"/>
    </attributes>
    <nodes>
      <node id="0" label="Gephi">
        <attvalues>
          <attvalue for="0" value="http://gephi.org"/>
          <attvalue for="1" value="1"/>
          <attvalue for="room" value="10"/>
          <attvalue for="price" value="10.02"/>
          <attvalue for="projects" value="300"/>
          <attvalue for="members" value="[Altomare, Sterpeto, Lino]"/>
          <attvalue for="pins" value="[true, false, true, false]"/>
        </attvalues>
      </node>
       <node id="5" label="Gephi">
          <attvalues>
            <attvalue for="0" value="http://test.gephi.org"/>
            <attvalue for="1" value="2"/>
          </attvalues>
        </node>
      <node id="1" label="Webatlas">
        <attvalues>
          <attvalue for="0" value="http://webatlas.fr"/>
          <attvalue for="1" value="2"/>
        </attvalues>
      </node>
      <node id="2" label="RTGI">
        <attvalues>
          <attvalue for="0" value="http://rtgi.fr"/>
          <attvalue for="1" value="1"/>
        </attvalues>
      </node>
      <node id="3" label=":BarabasiLab:Webatlas">
        <attvalues>
          <attvalue for="0" value="http://barabasilab.com"/>
          <attvalue for="1" value="1"/>
          <attvalue for="2" value="false"/>
        </attvalues>
      </node>
    </nodes>
    <edges>
      <edge source="0" target="1" kind="KNOWS">
          <attvalues>
            <attvalue for="score" value="1.5"/>
          </attvalues>
      </edge>
      <edge source="0" target="0" kind="BAZ">
          <attvalues>
            <attvalue for="foo" value="bar"/>
            <attvalue for="score" value="2"/>
          </attvalues>
      </edge>
      <edge source="0" target="2" kind="HAS_TICKET">
          <attvalues>
            <attvalue for="ajeje" value="brazorf"/>
            <attvalue for="score" value="3"/>
          </attvalues>
      </edge>
      <edge source="0" target="2" kind="KNOWS" />
      <edge source="1" target="0" kind="KNOWS" />
      <edge source="2" target="1" kind="KNOWS" />
      <edge source="0" target="3" kind="KNOWS" />
      <edge source="5" target="3" kind="KNOWS" />
    </edges>
  </graph>
</gexf>

CALL apoc.import.gexf('data.gexf', {readLabels:true})

Table 3. Results
value
{ "relationships" : 8, "batches" : 0, "file" : "file:/../data.gexf", "nodes" : 5, "format" : "gexf", "source" : "file", "time" : 9736, "rows" : 0, "batchSize" : -1, "done" : true, "properties" : 21 }

We can also store the node IDs by executing:

CALL apoc.import.gexf('data.gexf', {readLabels:true, storeNodeIds: true})

source / target config

Allows the import of relations in case the source and / or target nodes are not present in the file, searching for nodes via a custom label and property. To do this, we can insert into the config map source: {label: '<MY_SOURCE_LABEL>', id: ’<MY_SOURCE_ID>'}` and/or source: {label: '<MY_TARGET_LABEL>', id: ’<MY_TARGET_ID>'}` In this way, we can search start and end nodes via the source and end attribute of edge tag.

For example, with a config map {source: {id: 'myId', label: 'Foo'}, target: {id: 'other', label: 'Bar'}} with a edge row like <edge id="e0" source="n0" target="n1" label="KNOWS"><data key="label">KNOWS</data></edge> we search a source node (:Foo {myId: 'n0'}) and an end node (:Bar {other: 'n1'}). The id key is optional (the default is 'id').