Cypher Neo4j Couldn't load the external resource

Question

In a Windows environment, I'm trying to load a .csv file with statement:

LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "file:///E:/Neo4j/customers.csv" AS row

It seems not to work properly and returns: Couldn't load the external resource at:

file:/E:/Neo4j/Customers.csv Neo.TransientError.Statement.ExternalResourceFailure

What am I doing wrong? thanks in advance

Answer 1

I was getting this error on Community Edition 3.0.1 on Mac OS X 10.10 It appears that the LOAD CSV file:/// looks for files in a predefined directory. One would think that in the argument that one would give the Cypher statement the full path but that is not the case.

The file:/// - for my situation" meant that neo4j would append the given argument you gave to one that was already predefined and then go look for that combined path The file:/// pre-defined directory directory did not exist entirely /Users/User/Documents/Neo4j/default.graphdb/import, in my computers directory structure I was missing the "/import" folder, which was not created at install

To fix on my system, I created an "import" directory, put the file to be read in that directory. I executed the Cypher load statement I ONLY put the name of the file to be read in the file argument i.e.

LOAD CSV file:///data.csv

this worked for me.

Answer 2

It appears to be a security configuration. Here's the original answer I found: https://stackoverflow.com/a/37444571/327004

You can add the following setting in conf/neo4j.conf in order to bypass this :

dbms.security.allow_csv_import_from_file_urls=true

Or change the import directory dbms.directories.import=import

Answer 3

You can find the answer in the file

"C:\Users\Jack\AppData\Roaming\Neo4j Community Edition\neo4j.conf"

(above "dbms.directories.import=import")

For version neo4j-community_windows-x64_3_1_1 you have to comment out this line or you have to create the folder \import (which isn´t created through the installation) and add your file into the folder.

---

There it´s written that due to security reasons they only allow file load from the \Documents\Neo4j\default.graphdb\import folder

After commenting out on # dbms.directories.import=import , you can execute e.g. from

LOAD CSV FROM "file:///C:/Users/Jack/Documents/products.csv" AS row 

---

In neo4j.conf I didn´t have to add/set

dbms.security.allow_csv_import_from_file_urls=true

Answer 4

On (Arch) Linux + neo4j-community-3.4.0-alpha09, edit $NEO4J_HOME/conf /neo4j.conf:

• uncomment or add: dbms.security.allow_csv_import_from_file_urls=true
• comment: #dbms.directories.import=import

Restart neo4j (in terminal: neo4j restart), and reload the Neo4j Browser (http://localhost:7474/browser/) if you are using a web browser as your Neo4j interface/GUI.

Then, you should be able to load a csv from outside your $NEO4J_HOME/... directory

E.g.,

LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "file:///mnt/Vancouver/Programming/data/metabolism/practice/a.csv" AS ...

where my $NEO4J_HOME/ is /mnt/Vancouver/apps/neo4j/neo4j-community-3.4.0-alpha09/

LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "file:/mnt/Vancouver/Programming/data/metabolism/practice/a.csv" AS ...

also works, but not

LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "file://mnt/Vancouver/Programming/data/metabolism/practice/a.csv" AS...

or

LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "/mnt/Vancouver/Programming/data/metabolism/practice/a.csv" AS...

i.e. use ...file:/... or ...file:///...

Answer 5

It's probably an URL issue, try file:c:/path/to/data.csv

See my blog posts:

• http://jexp.de/blog/2014/10/load-cvs-with-success/
• http://jexp.de/blog/2014/06/load-csv-into-neo4j-quickly-and-successfully/

Answer 6

For the ubuntu system, I placed the file in /usr/lib/neo4j which helped me solved the issue. On every other location, i tried giving full permissions(777) but the problem remains the same. After going through another stackoverflow post, i realized that the file should be kept in neo4j directory.

Answer 7

In the Neo4j desktop select the database you are using, go to the setting and there you will find the solution... just comment the "dbms.directories.import=import" line

# This setting constrains all LOAD CSV import files to be under the import directory. Remove or comment it out to

# allow files to be loaded from anywhere in the filesystem; this introduces possible security problems. See the

# LOAD CSV section of the manual for details.

dbms.directories.import=import ### COMMENT THIS LINE

Answer 8

For macOS Mojave v 10.14.5

Actually, I had to uncomment dbms.directories.import=import from ~/Library/Application Support/Neo4j Desktop/Application/neo4jDatabases/database-e2dd2a9c-d450-4639-861b-1e7e42b56b31/installation-3.5.5/conf/neo4j.conf and restart the service. Then it worked. All files has to be placed in import directory.

Run command LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM 'FILE:/<yourCSV>.csv' as l return l

Answer 9

I am using the Neo4j Desktop and as others have said, the default graph database has a predefined import location. You can find the location by using the UI. If you put the CSV into the import directory, then you can use the relative path directly from you load csv command

Answer 10

Neo4j version is 3.1.1, OS is win10.

For me, LOAD CSV would read from Neo4j_Database_Location/testDB/import/artists.csv.

At first, I put csv file on the path F:\code\java\helloworld\artists.csv, and my cypher sentence is

LOAD CSV FROM 'file:///F:\\code\\java\\helloworld\\artists.csv' AS line  
CREATE(:Artist {name:line[1],year:toInt(line[2])})

Then I get the error message returned as follows:

Couldn't load the external resource at: file:/D:/Neo4j/db/testDB/import/code/java/helloworld/artists.csv

It means neo4j itself concat the file path. "D:/Neo4j/db/testDB/import/" is the Neo4j database location, and the "code/java/helloworld/artists.csv" is the csv file location.

For example, I install Neo4j on the path D:\Neo4j\Neo4j CE 3.1.1, and database loaction is D:\Neo4j\db. I put the CSV file on the path D:\Neo4j\db\testDB\import\artist.csv. If you don't have the file folder "import" on the path, you should creat it by yourself and put your file in the folder "import".

Then, put your csv file in the path, and input cyper sentence:

LOAD CSV from 'file:///artist.csv' as LINE
CREATE(:Artist {name:line[1],year:toInt(line[2])})

In a word, once you put the CSV file in the right path, the problem can be solved.

Related explaination in the LOAD CSV developer-manal

If dbms.directories.import is set to the default value import, using the above URLs in LOAD CSV would read from /import/myfile.csv and import/myproject/myfile.csv respectively. If it is set to /data/csv, using the above URLs in LOAD CSV would read from /data/csv/myfile.csv and /data/csv/myproject/myfile.csv respectively.

Answer 11

1. Set the Property "dbms.directories.import=import"
2. Create folder 'import' explicitly at "/Users/User/Documents/Neo4j/default.graphdb/" because pre-defined directory did not exist entirely
3. place the csv data set here in the import folder
4. then run the code like - LOAD CSV FROM "file:///C:/customers.csv" AS row

In addition after you run the line, you can analyze what is going wrong in the code section to get a better understanding

Answer 12

you put your dataset into the import directory in neo4j-community path. Then re-run your command.

Answer 13

Add your csv file in the import folder of neo4j installation guide to do this.

1. open neo4j and start graph of ur project

2. then in open folders tab open import folders

3. Copy ur csv file in this folder

4. Copy that part in ur load syntax as file:///C:/neo4j_module_datasets/test.csv since ur neo4j in running in C drive

Snapshot for your reference

Answer 14

Use the following syntax:

LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "file:///my_collection.csv" AS row CREATE (n:myCollection) SET n = row

If you are running a docker then, follow these commands before running above query:

docker run \
-p=7474:7474 \
-p=7687:7687 \
-v=$HOME/neo4j/data:/data \
-v=$HOME/neo4j/logs:/logs \
-v=$HOME/local_import_dir:/var/lib/neo4j/import \
neo4j:3.0

Then,

sudo cp my_collection.csv /home/bajju/local_import_dir/

Answer 15

The easiest way (be ware of security) is to serve you directory over http and use the http import

• in the command line go the folder where csv files are lcoated
• run the following depending on your python env.

Python 2 $ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000 Python 3 $ python3 -m http.server 8000 - Now you can load your files from your local host LOAD CSV FROM 'http://localhost:8000/mycsvfile.csv' AS row return row - you can actually expose files on one host and load them where your DB is running by exposing the folder and replacing localhost with your IP