Neo4J (GraphDB)

Neo4J (GraphDB)#

Neo4J is an open source and enterprise graph database.

See tests/neo4j for complete template.

Adding neo4j to your app’s docker-compose.yaml#

services:
  # ...
  yourapp-neo4j:
    image: neo4j:4.4.8-community
    pull_policy: missing
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
    - NEO4J_AUTH=neo4j/${NEO4J_PASSWORD}
    # this should be in your .env file and set to a long random string
    - NEO4J_PASSWORD
    ports:
    - 7687:7687
    - 7474:7474
    volumes:
    - yourapp-neo4j-data:/data

volumes:
  yourapp-neo4j-data:
    x-kubernetes:
      size: 1Gi
      class: local-path

Transfering your local database to the production database#

# neo4j must be stopped for dump/load
docker compose stop yourapp-neo4j
sshkube run kube-compose stop yourapp-neo4j

# stream dump output directly to pg_restore on db runnning in cluster
docker compose run -t yourapp-neo4j neo4j-admin database dump neo4j \
  | sshkube run kube-compose run -i yourapp-neo4j neo4j-admin database load neo4j

# you can of course go the other way around as well if you needed to get information from production
sshkube run kube-compose run -t yourapp-neo4j neo4j-admin database dump neo4j \
  | docker compose run -i yourapp-neo4j neo4j-admin database load neo4j

# start them back up when done
docker compose start yourapp-neo4j
sshkube run kube-compose start yourapp-neo4j

Accessing the database in your app#

The database will be accessible at the hostname corresponding to your service name, but it’s best practice to set up an environment variable to specify the location. For example, in python:

  • .env:

    # so you can test accessing the database locally
NEO4J_URL=bolt://neo4j:YOURNEO4J_PASSWORD@localhost:7687

  • docker-compose.yaml:

    services:
  yourapp-app:
    environment:
    # so your app container goes to the right location, **NOT localhost**
    - NEO4J_URL=bolt://neo4j:${NEO4J_PASSWORD}$@yourapp-neo4j:7687

  • app.py:

    import os
import dotenv
from py2neo import Graph

dotenv.load_dotenv()

# connect to db
graph = Graph(os.environ['NEO4J_URL'])

# ... use graph in your app to build queries ...

Accessing Neo4J Web Browser#

http://localhost:7474/browser

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