apoc.cypher.runTimeboxed

Procedure

apoc.cypher.runTimeboxed(statement STRING, params MAP<STRING, ANY>, timeout INTEGER) - terminates a Cypher statement if it has not finished before the set timeout (ms).

This procedure is not considered safe to run from multiple threads. It is therefore not supported by the parallel runtime (introduced in Neo4j 5.13). For more information, see the Cypher Manual → Parallel runtime.

Signature

apoc.cypher.runTimeboxed(cypher :: STRING, params :: MAP, timeout :: INTEGER) :: (value :: MAP)

Input parameters

Name Type Default

cypher

STRING

null

params

MAP

null

timeout

INTEGER

null

Output parameters

Name Type

value

MAP

Usage Examples

The examples in this section are based on a sample graph with 10000 nodes, each with 50 relationships with the label "Node" and Type "CONNECTED_TO".

The query below calculates the cross product of shortest paths for every pair of nodes.

match (n:Node), (m:Node)
WHERE n <> m
match path = shortestpath((n)-[:CONNECTED_TO*]-(m))
RETURN n, m, length(path) AS path;

This query returns 999,000 rows, but it takes a while to return all of those rows.

We can use the apoc.cypher.runTimeboxed procedure to return the paths computed within a threshold defined in ms. We can return the results computed within 100ms, by running the query below:

call apoc.cypher.runTimeboxed("match (n:Node), (m:Node)
WHERE n <> m
match path = shortestpath((n)-[:CONNECTED_TO*]-(m))
RETURN n, m, length(path) AS path", {}, 100)
YIELD value
RETURN value.n.uuid, value.m.uuid, value.path;
Table 1. Results
value.n.uuid value.m.uuid value.path

"67dd7a13-dc8d-4d82-9ab3-383d66c54fe4"

"62b0578a-cae5-4d45-8a47-5553692a6f22"

1

"67dd7a13-dc8d-4d82-9ab3-383d66c54fe4"

"9d910497-1aca-48e8-a14c-cd04528675ab"

1

"67dd7a13-dc8d-4d82-9ab3-383d66c54fe4"

"dde31015-73a9-4d22-bf57-ee13a8f7eeb0"

1

"67dd7a13-dc8d-4d82-9ab3-383d66c54fe4"

"6040453e-c705-4755-95f3-3b673d10ae54"

1

"67dd7a13-dc8d-4d82-9ab3-383d66c54fe4"

"bb2a9b42-71ab-4219-beae-a1e99353921f"

1

"67dd7a13-dc8d-4d82-9ab3-383d66c54fe4"

"856a4b54-d027-4438-bbee-fd34d9a6990d"

1

"67dd7a13-dc8d-4d82-9ab3-383d66c54fe4"

"d3e325b4-7691-400a-a819-787c065d537c"

1

…​.

1022 rows available after 9 ms, consumed after another 1 ms