An easier, better, tastier (!) BeerGraphGuide in the Neo4j Browser!

I recently wrote two blogposts about a fancy new way to create "Guides" right in the Neo4j Browser - a system that we at Neo have used ourselves to create learning experiences for the Neo4j Graph Database - but that we are now also extending and making available to our community and Enterprise customers. The first post showed you what the result was, and the second post showed you how easy it was to create such a guide. And of course, since this is still all very new and under development by the inimitable Michael Hunger, it is still evolving at warp speed.

So that's why I am adding a third post to this series, based on the lastest version of Michael's github repo. In this version, he has added a much more convenient way to serve the HTML page that we use as the basis for the Browser Guide: we essentially don't need a CORS-enabled webserver anymore - we can just use the webserver that is already baked into Neo4j and which the Browser already uses. Michael did this by developing an unmanaged extension that picks up the HTML file from a local directory, and then serves it when you call the :play command in the browser. So how does it work? Let's show you.

Installing the Unmanaged Extension

You will find the extension on the github repo under the "guide-extension" directory. Michael has added some detailed installation instructions if you would be able and willing to compile the software yourself - but he has also added a compiled version link for Neo4j Enterprise 2.3.2. You can download the .jar file, and then just add this to the right directory of your Neo4j Enterprise 2.3.2 installation: the "plugins" subdirectory.

Cycling Tweets Part 4: Ranking the Nodes

In the previous couple of blogposts in this series (here's part 1, part 2 and part 3 for you), I have explained how I got into the Cycling Twitterverse, how I imported data from a mix of sources (CQ Ranking, TwitterExport, and a Python script talking to the Twitter API), and thereby constructed a really interesting graph around Cycling.

There's so many more things to do with this dataset. But in this post, I want to explore something that I have been wanting to experiment with for a while: The GraphAware Framework. Michal and his team have been doing some real cool stuff with us in the past couple of years, not in the least the creation of a couple of very nice add-ons/plugins to the Neo4j server.

One of these modules is the "NodeRank" module. This implements the famous "PageRank" algorithm that made Google what it is today.

It does this in a very smart way - and also very unintrusively, utilising only excess capacity on your Neo4j server. It's really easy to use. All you need to do is

• drop the runtimes in the Neo4j ./plugins directory
• activate the runtimes in the Neo4j.properties file that you find in your Neo4j ./conf directory. 

Here's what I added to my server (also available on github):

//Add this to the <your neo4j directory>/conf/neo4j.properties after adding
//graphaware-noderank-2.2.1.30.2.jar and
//graphaware-server-enterprise-all-2.2.1.30.jar
//to <your neo4j directory>/plugins directory
 
com.graphaware.runtime.enabled=true
 #NR becomes the module ID:
com.graphaware.module.NR.1=com.graphaware.module.noderank.NodeRankModuleBootstrapper
 
#optional number of top ranked nodes to remember, the default is 10
com.graphaware.module.NR.maxTopRankNodes=50
 
#optional damping factor, which is a number p such that a random node will be selected at any step of the algorithm
#with the probability 1-p (as opposed to following a random relationship). The default is 0.85
com.graphaware.module.NR.dampingFactor=0.85
 
#optional key of the property that gets written to the ranked nodes, default is "nodeRank"
com.graphaware.module.NR.propertyKey=nodeRank
 
#optionally specify nodes to rank using an expression-based node inclusion policy, default is all business (i.e. non-framework-internal) nodes
com.graphaware.module.NR.node=hasLabel('Handle')
 
#optionally specify relationships to follow using an expression-based relationship inclusion policy, default is all business (i.e. non-framework-internal) relationships
com.graphaware.module.NR.relationship=isType('FOLLOWS') #NR becomes the module ID:
com.graphaware.module.TR.2=com.graphaware.module.noderank.NodeRankModuleBootstrapper
 
#optional number of top ranked nodes to remember, the default is 10
com.graphaware.module.TR.maxTopRankNodes=50
 
#optional damping factor, which is a number p such that a random node will be selected at any step of the algorithm
#with the probability 1-p (as opposed to following a random relationship). The default is 0.85
com.graphaware.module.TR.dampingFactor=0.85
 
#optional key of the property that gets written to the ranked nodes, default is "nodeRank"
com.graphaware.module.TR.propertyKey=topicRank
 
#optionally specify nodes to rank using an expression-based node inclusion policy, default is all business (i.e. non-framework-internal) nodes
com.graphaware.module.TR.node=hasLabel('Hashtag')
 
#optionally specify relationships to follow using an expression-based relationship inclusion policy, default is all business (i.e. non-framework-internal) relationships
com.graphaware.module.TR.relationship=isType('MENTIONED_IN')

As you can see from the above, I have two instances of the NodeRank module active. 

1. The first attempts to get a feel for the importance of "Nodes" (in this case, the nodes with label "Handle") by calculating the nodeRank along the "FOLLOWS" relationships. After just half an hour of "ranking" we get a pretty good feel:
   
   This seems to be confirming - in my humble opinion - some of the more successful riders in April, for sure. But also confirms that the "big names" (Contador, Froome, Cancellara) are attracting their share of Twitter activity no matter what.
2. The second does the same for the "Topics" (in this case, the nodes with the label "Hashtag") along the the "MENTIONED_IN" relationships.
   
   The classic races are clearly "top of mind" in the Twitterverse! But upon investigation I have also found that there are a lot of confusing #hashtags out there that make it difficult to understand the really important ones. Would love to investigate a bit more there.

Like I said before, the GraphAware framework is really interesting. It gives you the opportunity to make stuff that you could also do in Cypher more easily, faster, and more consistently. I really liked my experience with it.

Hope this was useful for you - as always feedback is very very welcome.

Cheers

Rik