Cypher syntax for administration commands
Almost all administration commands have variations. The most common are parts of the command that are optional or that can have multiple values.
See below a summary of the syntax used to describe all versions of a command. These summaries use some special characters to indicate such variations.
Reading the administration commands syntax
Character | Meaning | Example |
---|---|---|
|
Used to indicate alternative parts of a command (i.e. |
If the syntax needs to specify either a name or |
|
Used to group parts of the command. Commonly found together with |
In order to use the |
|
Used to indicate an optional part of the command. It also groups alternatives together, when there can be either of the alternatives or nothing. |
If a keyword in the syntax can either be in singular or plural, we can indicate that the |
|
Repeated pattern. Related to the command part immediately before this is repeated. |
A comma separated list of names would be |
|
When a special character is part of the syntax itself, we surround it with |
To include |
The special characters in the table above are the only ones that need to be escaped using "
in the syntax summaries.
Here is an example that uses all the special characters. It grants the READ
privilege:
GRANT READ
"{" { * | property[, ...] } "}"
ON {HOME GRAPH | GRAPH[S] { * | name[, ...] }}
[ ELEMENT[S] { * | label-or-rel-type[, ...] }
| NODE[S] { * | label[, ...] }
| RELATIONSHIP[S] { * | rel-type[, ...] }]
TO role[, ...]
Note that this command includes {
and }
in the syntax, and between them there can be a grouping of properties or the character *
.
It also has multiple optional parts, including the entity part of the command which is the grouping following the graph name.
However, there is no need to escape any characters when creating a constraint for a node property.
This is because (
and )
are not special characters, and [
and ]
indicate that the constraint name and the IF NOT EXISTS
parts are optional, and therefore not part of the command.
CREATE CONSTRAINT [constraint_name] [IF NOT EXISTS]
FOR (n:LabelName)
REQUIRE n.propertyName IS NOT NULL
Database management command syntax
The below table covers both standard and composite databases.
Command | Syntax | ||
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Database alias management command syntax
Command | Syntax |
---|---|
Show Database Alias |
Lists both local and remote database aliases, optionally filtered on the alias name. |
Create Local Alias |
|
Create Remote Alias |
|
Alter Local Alias |
|
Alter Remote Alias |
|
Drop Alias |
Drop either a local or remote database alias. |