Property, structural, and constructed values

A property type value is one that can be stored as a node or relationship property.

The following data types are included in the property types category: BOOLEAN, DATE, DURATION, FLOAT, INTEGER, LIST, LOCAL DATETIME, LOCAL TIME, POINT, STRING, ZONED DATETIME, and ZONED TIME.

Homogeneous lists of simple types can be stored as properties, although lists in general (see Constructed types) cannot be stored as properties. Lists stored as properties cannot contain null values.

Cypher also provides pass-through support for byte arrays, which can be stored as property values. Byte arrays are supported for performance reasons, since using Cypher’s generic data type, LIST<INTEGER> (where each INTEGER has a 64-bit representation), would be too costly. However, byte arrays are not considered a first class data type by Cypher, so they do not have a literal representation.

The following data types are included in the structural types category: NODE, RELATIONSHIP, and PATH.

The NODE data type includes: id, label(s), and a map of properties. Note that labels are not values, but a form of pattern syntax.

The RELATIONSHIP data type includes: id, relationship type, a map of properties, start node id, and end node id.

The PATH data type is an alternating sequence of nodes and relationships.

The following data types are included in the constructed types category: LIST and MAP.

The LIST data type can be either a homogenous collection of simple values, or a heterogeneous, ordered collection of values, each of which can have any property, structural or constructed type.

The MAP data type is a heterogeneous, unordered collection of (Key, Value) pairs, where Key is a literal and Value can have any property, structural, or constructed type.

Constructed type values can also contain null. For more details, see working with null.

The table below shows the types and their syntactic synonyms.

These types (and their synonyms) can be used in type predicate expressions and in property type constraints. They are also returned as a STRING value when using the valueType() function.

However, not all types can be used in all places.

All Cypher types contain the null value. To make them not nullable, NOT NULL can be appended to the end of the type (e.g. BOOLEAN NOT NULL, LIST<FLOAT NOT NULL>). A shorthand syntax equivalent, introduced in Neo4j 5.14, for NOT NULL is to use an exclamation mark ! (e.g. INTEGER!, LIST<STRING!>). Note that closed dynamic types (INNER_TYPE_1 | INNER_TYPE_2…​) cannot be appended with NOT NULL: all inner types must be nullable, or all appended with NOT NULL.

Cypher runs a normalization algorithm on all input types, simplifying the given type to a deterministic representation for equivalent types. Types are simplified to their default name (e.g. BOOL is simplified to BOOLEAN). Encompassing types are absorbed (e.g. LIST<BOOLEAN> | LIST<BOOLEAN | INTEGER> is normalized to LIST<BOOLEAN | INTEGER>). Types are also ordered.

The type PROPERTY VALUE is expanded to a closed dynamic union of all valid property types, and if all types are represented, then the normalization would simplify to ANY.

For example, given the closed dynamic type BOOL | LIST<INT> | BOOLEAN | LIST<FLOAT | INT>, the normalized type would be: BOOLEAN | LIST<INTEGER | FLOAT>.

This normalization is run on types used in type predicate expressions, and in property type constraints. Type normalization is also used to ensure the consistency of the output for the valueType() function.

The below table provides more detailed information about the various property types that Cypher supports. Note that Cypher types are implemented using Java, and that below table references Java value constants.