Convert Wikipedia Dumps to Neo4j Loadable CSVs

This application enables you to transform and download Wikipedia dumps into Neo4j loadable CSVs. If you only need the results once, using the remote version of the InputFile is recommended, as it automatically downloads the latest dump. For multiple runs, such as for testing or adding features to the code, it's advisable to download and unzip the files beforehand to optimize performance.

The CSV files will be output to the data/{wiki} directory.

Options

Local file URIs expect the files to be located in the {user_home}/wikidata folder.

InputFile	URI	Output Folder	FileLoader	Expected Runtime
EN_WIKI	enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml	en_wiki	PLAIN	20min
EN_WIKI_BZ2	enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2	en_wiki	BZ2	1h
EN_WIKI_BZ2_REMOTE	https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2	en_wiki	REMOTE_BZ2	1h 30min
SIMPLE_WIKI	simplewiki-latest-pages-articles.xml	simple_wiki	PLAIN	20s
SIMPLE_WIKI_BZ2	simplewiki-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2	simple_wiki	BZ2	50s
SIMPLE_WIKI_BZ2_REMOTE (Default)	https://dumps.wikimedia.org/simplewiki/latest/simplewiki-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2	simple_wiki	REMOTE_BZ2	4min

To run the application, use the following command:

mvn compile exec:java -Dexec.args="{InputFile}"

Sample:

mvn compile exec:java -Dexec.args="SIMPLE_WIKI_BZ2_REMOTE"

Output Data

The output consists of two types of CSV files: "links" and "pages", both chunked at 256 megabytes. The format is consistent with their respective header files located under headers/.

Pages

The format of the pages output CSVs is defined in headers/pages_headers.csv.

Field	Example	Description
urlTitle:ID	Alan_Turing	This field is used as a unique ID in Neo4j and is the title formatted to work in the Wikipedia URL path.
title:string	Alan Turing	The title of the page.
pageId:long	1261710	Wikipedia's internal page ID, which can be used with the Wikipedia API.
isRedirect:boolean	false	Indicates if the page is a redirect to another page.

Links

The format of the links output CSVs is defined in headers/links_headers.csv.

Field	Example	Description
:START_ID	Alan_Turing	The URL title of the page where the link is located.
:END_ID	Human_rights	The URL title of the target page.
text:string	human rights	The link text visible on the website.
isRedirect:boolean	false	Indicates if the :START_ID page is a redirect page.
index:long	45	The position of the link on the page.

Dumps

You can find dump files at https://dumps.wikimedia.org/.

wiki	url
enwiki	https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2
simplewiki	https://dumps.wikimedia.org/simplewiki/latest/simplewiki-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2

Expected Disk/Network Usage

InputFile	Input File Size	Total CSV Size
EN_WIKI	87G	20G
EN_WIKI_BZ2*	19G	20G
SIMPLE_WIKI	1.1G	333M
SIMPLE_WIKI_BZ2*	236M	333M

Neo4j Import Usage

wiki	Import Time	Node Count	Relationship Count	Data Volume Size
en_wiki	14min	22781670	235766142	26G
simple_wiki	40s	430468	3353337	900M

Sample Importing CSVs in docker container

There is a minimal docker compose configuration for neo4j in the file: docker-compose.yaml. You can run the following commands to set up neo4j and import the CSVs.

If you want to use password authentication you have to create a file called ".env" in the same directory as the docker-compose.yaml file. The file should look like this:

NEO4J_AUTH=neo4j/YOUR_PASSWORD

It is important that the username is "neo4j" otherwise neo4j will not start.

Setup & Import Simple-Wiki

echo "Remove existing installation if exists"
docker compose down --volumes
docker compose rm --volumes --stop --force

echo "Start and Stop Neo4j to initialize the volumes"
docker compose up --detach --wait
docker compose down

echo "Import the CSV files"
header_dir="$(pwd)/headers"
data_dir="$(pwd)/data/simple_wiki"
report="$(pwd)/import.report"
echo -n "" >"${report}"
docker run --interactive --tty --rm \
  --volume=wiki-to-neo4j-csv-parser_data:/data \
  --volume="${data_dir}":/import \
  --volume="${header_dir}":/import-headers \
  --volume="${report}":/var/lib/neo4j/import.report \
  neo4j:5.26 \
  neo4j-admin database import full --overwrite-destination --bad-tolerance=10000000000 \
  --nodes=Page=/import-headers/page_headers.csv,/import/pages-\\d+.csv \
  --relationships=LINKS_TO=/import-headers/link_headers.csv,/import/links-\\d+.csv \
  --skip-bad-relationships

Setup & Import En-Wiki

echo "Remove existing installation if exists"
docker compose down --volumes
docker compose rm --volumes --stop --force

echo "Start and Stop Neo4j to initialize the volumes"
docker compose up --detach --wait
docker compose down

echo "Import the CSV files"
header_dir="$(pwd)/headers"
data_dir="$(pwd)/data/en_wiki"
report="$(pwd)/import.report"
echo -n "" >"${report}"
docker run --interactive --tty --rm \
  --volume=wiki-to-neo4j-csv-parser_data:/data \
  --volume="${data_dir}":/import \
  --volume="${header_dir}":/import-headers \
  --volume="${report}":/var/lib/neo4j/import.report \
  neo4j:5.26 \
  neo4j-admin database import full --overwrite-destination --bad-tolerance=10000000000 \
  --nodes=Page=/import-headers/page_headers.csv,/import/pages-\\d+.csv \
  --relationships=LINKS_TO=/import-headers/link_headers.csv,/import/links-\\d+.csv \
  --skip-bad-relationships

Start

The admin GUI is available on http://localhost:7474/browser/ you can authenticate with the "authentication type" "no authentication" or "username / password" depending on if you have set a password in the ".env" file. The database can be reached on port 7687.

docker compose up --detach --wait

Stop

docker compose down

Sample Cypher

Create Index

When you want to do path searches over the "urlTitle" it is advised to create an index on it to increase the lookup speed.

CREATE CONSTRAINT pages_urlTitle
FOR (p:Page) REQUIRE p.urlTitle IS UNIQUE

Find Page

MATCH (p:Page { urlTitle: 'Switzerland' })
RETURN p

Find Shortest Path

MATCH path=shortestPath((start:Page)-[:LINKS_TO*1..20]->(end:Page))
WHERE start.urlTitle = "Switzerland" AND end.urlTitle = "United_States"
RETURN path