ORDER BY

Introduction

Note that you cannot sort on nodes or relationships, just on properties on these. ORDER BY relies on comparisons to sort the output, see syntax/operators.adoc#cypher-ordering.

In terms of scope of variables, ORDER BY follows special rules, depending on if the projecting RETURN or WITH clause is either aggregating or DISTINCT. If it is an aggregating or DISTINCT projection, only the variables available in the projection are available. If the projection does not alter the output cardinality (which aggregation and DISTINCT do), variables available from before the projecting clause are also available. When the projection clause shadows already existing variables, only the new variables are available.

Lastly, it is not allowed to use aggregating expressions in the ORDER BY sub-clause if they are not also listed in the projecting clause. This last rule is to make sure that ORDER BY does not change the results, only the order of them.

The performance of Cypher® queries using ORDER BY on node properties can be influenced by the existence and use of an index for finding the nodes. If the index can provide the nodes in the order requested in the query, Cypher can avoid the use of an expensive Sort operation. Read more about this capability in the section on Index Values and Order.

Graph
  N0 [
    label = "name = \'A\'\llength = 170\lage = 34\l"
  ]
  N0 -> N1 [
    color = "#2e3436"
    fontcolor = "#2e3436"
    label = "KNOWS\n"
  ]
  N1 [
    label = "name = \'B\'\lage = 34\l"
  ]
  N1 -> N2 [
    color = "#2e3436"
    fontcolor = "#2e3436"
    label = "KNOWS\n"
  ]
  N2 [
    label = "name = \'C\'\llength = 185\lage = 32\l"
  ]

Strings that contain special characters can have inconsistent or non-deterministic ordering in Neo4j. For details, see syntax/values.adoc#property-types-sip-note.

Order nodes by property

ORDER BY is used to sort the output.

Query
MATCH (n)
RETURN n.name, n.age
ORDER BY n.name

The nodes are returned, sorted by their name.

Table 1. Result
n.name n.age

"A"

34

"B"

34

"C"

32

3 rows

Order nodes by multiple properties

You can order by multiple properties by stating each variable in the ORDER BY clause. Cypher will sort the result by the first variable listed, and for equals values, go to the next property in the ORDER BY clause, and so on.

Query
MATCH (n)
RETURN n.name, n.age
ORDER BY n.age, n.name

This returns the nodes, sorted first by their age, and then by their name.

Table 2. Result
n.name n.age

"C"

32

"A"

34

"B"

34

3 rows

Order nodes in descending order

By adding DESC[ENDING] after the variable to sort on, the sort will be done in reverse order.

Query
MATCH (n)
RETURN n.name, n.age
ORDER BY n.name DESC

The example returns the nodes, sorted by their name in reverse order.

Table 3. Result
n.name n.age

"C"

32

"B"

34

"A"

34

3 rows

Ordering null

When sorting the result set, null will always come at the end of the result set for ascending sorting, and first when doing descending sort.

Query
MATCH (n)
RETURN n.length, n.name, n.age
ORDER BY n.length

The nodes are returned sorted by the length property, with a node without that property last.

Table 4. Result
n.length n.name n.age

170

"A"

34

185

"C"

32

<null>

"B"

34

3 rows