Book Image

Learning Cypher

By : Onofrio Panzarino
Book Image

Learning Cypher

By: Onofrio Panzarino

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Deleting data


Cypher provides two clauses to delete data. They are as follows:

  • REMOVE: This clause is used to remove labels and properties from nodes or relationships

  • DELETE: This clause is used to delete nodes and relationships from the database

Removing labels

To remove a label from a node, you must use the REMOVE clause. The syntax is similar to the one for the SET clause, as shown in the following query:

MERGE (b:User {name: "Jack", surname: "Smith"})
REMOVE b:Inactive:MustConfirmEmail

This query removes the labels Inactive and MustConfirmEmail from the node that was matched. Note that we have chained the labels using the colon separator. If the node already doesn't have one or all of the labels specified, this query will not fail; it will only remove the labels it can remove.

Removing properties

The REMOVE clause is the opposite of the SET clause. It can be used to remove a property from a node, as shown in the following query:

MERGE (b:User {name: "Jack", surname: "Smith"})
REMOVE b.age

Anyway...