Neoclipse
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[edit] Introduction
Neoclipse is a subproject of Neo4j which aims to provide plugins for the Eclipse IDE in order to support the development of Neo4j applications. Main features:
- visualize the graph
- increase/decrease the traversal depth
- filter the view by relationship types
- add/remove nodes/relationships
- create relationship types
- add/remove/change properties on nodes and relationships
- highlight nodes/relationships in different ways
- add icons to nodes
[edit] Requirements
- Java 1.5
[edit] Eclipse plug-in
Neoclipse requires Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede). Get it from the Eclipse download page.
Make sure to download a package that includes GEF by comparing them or download and install the All-in-one GEF package from the GEF download page or make sure installing the GEF and GEF/Zest plugins using the update manager. The manual install is performed by unzipping the archive and adding the files to your Eclipse install. GEF can also be installed from the GEF update site.
Install the Neoclipse plugin from the Neoclipse update site.
Development snapshots are published to the Neoclipse snapshot update site.
[edit] Eclipse Europa/3.3.2
If you want to use Neoclipse with Eclipse 3.3.2, refer to this mail with instructions.
[edit] Standalone version
Neoclipse can also be downloaded as a standalone application from the Neoclipse standalone downloads page. Versions exist for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
Note: There's a problem with running recent Eclipse builds (and Eclipse-based applications like the standalone Neoclipse) on Ubuntu 9.10, making it impossible to click on buttons. Usually it still works to use the keyboard. Most of the the problem can be fixed by setting an environment variable like this
export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true
before starting Neoclipse.
[edit] Running/building from source code
The source code can be checked out from https://svn.neo4j.org/components/neoclipse/trunk/.
The preferred way to check out the code is as a multi-module Maven project and open it in Eclipse IDE.
The project is currently built against Eclipse Ganymede (3.4.2). The complete Target Platform used can be downloaded here (including the Delta Pack).
In the root of the org.neo4j.neoclipse project, you will find a file named neoclipse.product.
This is the standalone product configuration. You can launch it from the context menu -> Run As -> Eclipse Application or
by opening the file in the Product Configuration Editor and start it by clicking the "Launch an Eclipse application" link
in the Testing section. It is also possible to build the standalone distribution from the Product Configuration Editor
using the Eclipse Product export wizard.
In case it doesn't launch, try editing the Run Configuration and make sure to set Launch with: "all workspace and enabled target plug-ins". If your Eclipse IDE configuration is up to requirements of the Neoclipse plug-in (see above) this should be enough to launch it from source code as well.
To build Neoclipse as an Eclipse plugin, follow the instructions from Building Eclipse Plugins with Maven: Tycho.
[edit] Visual walkthrough
Note: the screen shots may be out of sync with the latest version of Neoclipse.
If you want bigger images for the nodes, that's fine too:
Properties are type safe and can be both a single element or an array:
And here you can see which types you can use for property values:
This is some of the magic you can do with relationship types:
From the Relationship types view you can also easily add icons to decorate start/end nodes.
And this image also shows you the checkboxes used for filtering the graph traversal:
[edit] Configuration
After starting Neoclipse/Eclipse, you have to select the location of your existing Neo4j database. In the menu, go to Window -> Preferences -> Neo4j. Enter your Neo4j database directory.
This is sufficient to get going, but using other settings as well gives additional power. Look for further information in the Preferences section of the Neoclipse User Guide, included both with plug-in and standalone versions. (In the menu, go to Help -> Help Contents -> Neoclipse User Guide -> Reference -> Preferences)
[edit] Neo4j Perspective
Neoclipse comes with an own perspective, which initializes all necessary views. In the Eclipse menu, go to Window -> Open Perspective -> Other. Select the Neo4j perspective.
Of course, you can also open the Neo4j views independently from the perspective.
[edit] Database graph
The Database graph view visualizes the network of objects that are stored in Neo4j, e.g. it displays Nodes and their Relationships. After startup, the view is focused on the reference node. Starting from there, the network can be browsed by double-clicking the connected nodes.
The properties of the currently selected node or relationship are shown in the Properties view,
and are also editable. There are also some layout algorithms available that can be selected
in the toolbar of the view.
Another sample shows the resulting graph when examining the Qi4j-Neo4j-EntityStore:
[edit] Limitations
As the Neoclipse project is still in its very early stages, several limitations exist.
- It could be useful to display more than one "hops" at a time -> to be implemented...
- It should be possible to connect to an already running Neo4j instance (similar to the remote console) -> work in progress with remote-graphdb component ...
[edit] Neoclipse Art
