Indexes and constraints

Clearly, getting all nodes and filtering them is not the best way to find a node. Every worthy database, just like Neo4j, allows you to create indexes in order to find data quickly.

From Version 2.0, in Neo4j, there is a new and recommended type of index, that is, a label index. These are the only indexes supported by Cypher. Therefore, let's create an index for users based on the email property. We only need to execute the following query:

CREATE INDEX ON :User(email)

As this operation of creating an index is asynchronous, we must wait for the indexes to be built and go online. A timeout of one minute for 1000 items should be enough on any modern machine. This is described in the following query:

try (Transaction tx = graphDb.beginTx()) {
   Schema schema = graphDb.schema();
   schema.awaitIndexesOnline(1, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
}

Note

Waiting for an index to go online can be done only with either the Java API or Neo4j Shell at the moment. This means that if you are using...