Py2neo: Find relations and return nodes

Question

how would you do this Cypher query from the movie graph example in neo4j web module work in py2neo without using the graph.cypher.execute (or get graph.cypher.execute to return a set of nodes instead of the ugly return-string it has)

MATCH (tom:Person {name: "Tom Hanks"})-[:ACTED_IN]->(tomHanksMovies) RETURN tom,tomHanksMovies

What I want is something like:

(n4358:Person {born:1956,name:"Tom Hanks"}, {'PLAYED_IN', 'year': 1990}, n4354:Movie {released:1998,tagline:"At odds in life... in love on-line.",title:"You've Got Mail"})

where a[0] gives the tom hanks node, a[1] the relation and a[2] gives the movie.

---

EDIT: Added "wrong" example-output

>>> print('List all Tom Hanks movies...')
>>> a = graph.cypher.execute('MATCH (tom:Person {name: "Tom Hanks"})-[:ACTED_IN]->(tomHanksMovies) RETURN tomHanksMovies')
>>> print(a)

List all Tom Hanks movies...
    | tomHanksMovies                                                                                                                                                                 
----+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1 | (n4354:Movie {released:1998,tagline:"At odds in life... in love on-line.",title:"You've Got Mail"})                                                                            
  2 | (n4360:Movie {released:1993,tagline:"What if someone you never met, someone you never saw, someone you never knew was the only someone for you?",title:"Sleepless in Seattle"})
  3 | (n4365:Movie {released:1990,tagline:"A story of love, lava and burning desire.",title:"Joe Versus the Volcano"})                                                               
  4 | (n4372:Movie {released:1996,tagline:"In every life there comes a time when that thing you dream becomes that thing you do",title:"That Thing You Do"})                         
  5 | (n4392:Movie {released:2012,tagline:"Everything is connected",title:"Cloud Atlas"})                                                                                            
  6 | (n4398:Movie {released:2006,tagline:"Break The Codes",title:"The Da Vinci Code"})                                                                                              
  7 | (n4417:Movie {released:1999,tagline:"Walk a mile you'll never forget.",title:"The Green Mile"})                                                                                
  8 | (n4431:Movie {released:1995,tagline:"Houston, we have a problem.",title:"Apollo 13"})                                                                                          
  9 | (n4437:Movie {released:2000,tagline:"At the edge of the world, his journey begins.",title:"Cast Away"})                                                                        
 10 | (n4446:Movie {released:2007,tagline:"A stiff drink. A little mascara. A lot of nerve. Who said they couldn't bring down the Soviet empire.",title:"Charlie Wilson's War"})     
 11 | (n4448:Movie {released:2004,tagline:"This Holiday Season… Believe",title:"The Polar Express"})                                                                                 
 12 | (n4449:Movie {released:1992,tagline:"Once in a lifetime you get a chance to do something different.",title:"A League of Their Own"})   


>>> print(a[0])

 tomHanksMovies                                                                                     
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 (n4354:Movie {released:1998,tagline:"At odds in life... in love on-line.",title:"You've Got Mail"})

>>> print(type(a[0]))

<class 'py2neo.cypher.core.Record'>

Answer 1

I presume you realise that execute doesn't actually return a string? What you see there in a is a representation of a RecordList as specified in the docs:

http://py2neo.org/2.0/cypher.html#py2neo.cypher.CypherResource.execute

a[0] then gives you the first Record in that RecordList. Values in that Record can then be accessed by name, e.g. a[0]['tomHanksMovies'].

The details for Record objects are here:

http://py2neo.org/2.0/cypher.html#records

Answer 2

If you're married to using py2neo what you can do is modify your query ever so slightly to return all the info you want. For example,

a = graph.cypher.execute("MATCH (a:Person {name:"Tom Hanks"})-[acted:ACTED_IN]->(movies:Movie) RETURN a, acted, movies")

What this should do is give you the results in a list, much like the one you said you don't want. But, from here you can index the results to get each part that you'd like. For example, a[0] will give you the first row of results, a[0][0] will give you the person node from the first row of results, a[0][0][0] will give you the first property of the first node from the first row, etc. From here you could run a for loop to organize the results into a form you're more interested in.

Hope this helps.