This project is a demo application for the Spring Data Neo4j 4.1 library which provides convenient access to the Neo4j graph database.

This tutorial is a fully functioning micro-service based web-application built using the following components

• Spring Boot 1.4
• Spring Data Neo4j 4.1
• Angular.js
• Twitter Bootstrap UI

The application's domain is a fictitious educational institution: Hilly Fields Technical College. The application allows you to manage the College's Departments, Teaching Staff, Subjects, Students and Classes.

It leverages the power of Spring Data Neo4j/Spring Boot and in particular the new Neo4j Object Graph mapping technology to provide a RESTful interface with which the web client interacts. The application is entirely stateless: every interaction involves a call to a Neo4j server, hopefully demonstrating the speed of the new technology, even over the wire.

By default, the application will attempt to use a Neo4j instance running on the same machine as the application server, and on the standard port 7474. IT WILL DESTROY ALL THE DATA IN THAT DATABASE AT STARTUP. So if you don't want that to happen please back up any existing database first.

SDN4-University uses the spring-boot-starter for SDN, available in Spring Boot 1.4 and later versions.

The starter will auto-configure the application from the application.properties file in the config directory.

# application.properties

# set the connection uri for the Neo4j server
spring.data.neo4j.uri=http://neo4j:password@localhost:7474
# neo4j session scoped to the http session
spring.data.neo4j.session.scope=session

# application.properties

# set the connection uri to a directory on the local filesystem. This directory MUST exist
spring.data.neo4j.uri=file:///tmp/sdn-university
# neo4j session scoped to the http session
spring.data.neo4j.session.scope=session

Please note, you must supply a physical file location for the database in the uri property - it is not currently possible to use an in-memory instance only.

To use the Embedded Driver you must also uncomment its dependency declaration in the pom:

    <!-- uncomment this dependency to use the embedded driver
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.neo4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>neo4j-ogm-embedded-driver</artifactId>
        <version>${ogm.driver.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    -->

Application Configuration is very simple:

@SpringBootApplication
@EnableTransactionManagement
@EnableNeo4jRepositories(basePackages = "school.domain")
public class Application {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        new SpringApplication(Application.class).run(args);
    }

}

Note the annotation @EnableNeo4jRepositories. This defines the packages that contain your application's domain classes. It is used by Spring Boot to configure the Neo4j OGM SessionFactory, so there is no need to explicitly manage this yourself.

Now start your Neo4j server instance, if its not already running.

You should back up any data you want to keep because the application will purge any existing data first

cd neo4j-spring-examples/sdn4-university
mvn spring-boot:run

The application itself does not require any authentication, but if you are running against Neo4j 2.2 or later, you'll need to provide connection credentials for the database.

These can be specified in application.properties located in config. You can embed the credentials in the URI string, for example:

spring.data.neo4j.URI=http://bilbo:baggins@localhost:7474 

or you can supply them as distinct properties:

spring.data.neo4j.username=bilbo
spring.data.neo4j.password=baggins

The application can load a set of base data, to get you started. Please be aware that this will destroy any existing data that may previously exist, so take a backup.

http://localhost:8080/api/reload

This will pre-load the Neo4j database with a handful of departments, a dozen or so subjects and teachers, and 200 students. You'll probably want to enrol them in classes...

The JSON resources from the server can be inspected from the /api/... URLs, e.g.

http://localhost:8080/api/departments/
http://localhost:8080/api/subjects/
http://localhost:8080/api/teachers/
http://localhost:8080/api/students/
http://localhost:8080/api/classes/

Simply point your browser at the root URL:

http://localhost:8080

You can stop the application server at any time by pressing Ctrl-C in the console window from where you launched it.

If you'd like to develop this application further, you will need to install node.js if it is not already installed:

• Node.js v0.10x+
• npm (which comes bundled with Node) v2.1.0+

Visit the node.js website for details of installing node.js for your particular operating system.

Once node is installed you'll then need to grab the following npm packages:

npm install --global bower grunt-cli

Permission to use this software is granted under the MIT License, a copy of which appears below:

Copyright © 2015-2016 Graph Aware Ltd - Neo Technology, Inc.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.