neo4django-tutorial

The django tutorial, backed by neo4django. This follows along with the official Django tutorial. Also see this documentation for the neo4django module.

Installation steps

Clone this repository and cd into it.

Install Django and neo4django

pip install -r requirements.txt

Install Neo4j

source setup_env_neo4j.bash

This script downloads and installs Neo4j 1.8.1 locally in the current directory. It then starts Neo4j running. To stop Neo4j, invoke the command

neo4j stop

from the command line.

Create the Django project

django-admin.py startproject mysite

Test it by running the development server and opening the URL to the homepage.

python manage.py runserver

Set up the databases

(These source code editing steps have already been done in this repository.)

Edit mysite/settings.py:

import os

# ...

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db', 'test_database.sqlite3')
    }
}

NEO4J_DATABASES = {
    'default' : {
        'HOST':'localhost',
        'PORT':7474,
        'ENDPOINT':'/db/data'
    }
}

Create the tables in the Sqlite3 database.

python manage.py syncdb

Create an app

cd mysite
python manage.py startapp polls

Edit polls/models.py to contain this:

from neo4django.db import models

class Poll(models.NodeModel):
    question = models.StringProperty(max_length=200)
    pub_date = models.DateTimeProperty('date published')

class Choice(models.NodeModel):
    poll = models.Relationship(Poll,
                               rel_type='offers',
                               single=True,
                               related_name='choices')
    choice = models.StringProperty(max_length=200)
    votes = models.IntegerProperty()

Add polls to the list of installed apps in mysite/settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.sites',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    # Uncomment the next line to enable the admin:
    # 'django.contrib.admin',
    # Uncomment the next line to enable admin documentation:
    # 'django.contrib.admindocs',
    'polls',
)

Playing with the API

We can start the interactive Python shell and play around with the API. To invoke the Python shell, use this command:

python manage.py shell

The neo4django documentation provides some examples of using the API.

This concludes part 1 of the tutorial.