Neo4j Natural Sorting

This plugin adds two functions to Neo4j which solves the problem of natural sorting for strings

Sorting example

Dataset:

=A100
=A10
=A2
=A30
=A1
=A4

Standard sorting implemented in Neo4j and APOC:

=A1
=A10
=A100
=A2
=A30
=A4

Natural sorting

=A1
=A2
=A4
=A10
=A30
=A100

Usage example

There are two methods implemented in the plugin - one for sorting by specific props of node and one for sorting list of strings.

Sorting list of strings

RETURN sort.natural_list(['=A2', '=A10', '=A1']) AS result

Sorting list of nodes by specific property

CREATE (Node{name: 'n1', rfd: '=A2'})
CREATE (Node{name: 'n2', rfd: '=A10'})
CREATE (Node{name: 'n3', rfd: '=A1'})

MATCH (object:Node)
RETURN sort.natural_obj(collect(object), 'rfd') AS result"

Also, there is an ability to reverse sorting - ^ char before property name means that sorting should be reversed:

CREATE (Node{name: 'n1', rfd: '=A2'})
CREATE (Node{name: 'n2', rfd: '=A10'})
CREATE (Node{name: 'n3', rfd: '=A1'})

MATCH (object:Node)
RETURN sort.natural_obj(collect(object), '^rfd') AS result"

Java Natural Order Comparator

NaturalOrderComparator.java -- Perform 'natural order' comparisons of strings in Java. Copyright (C) 2003 by Pierre-Luc Paour [email protected]

Based on the C version by Martin Pool, of which this is more or less a straight conversion. Copyright (C) 2000 by Martin Pool [email protected]

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.
2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.
3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.

Java Natural Order Node Comparator

NaturalOrderNodeComparator.java -- Perform 'natural order' comparisons of Neo4j nodes in Java. Copyright (C) 2003 by Pierre-Luc Paour [email protected] with small changes from Wojciech Maciejak

Based on the C version by Martin Pool, of which this is more or less a straight conversion. Copyright (C) 2000 by Martin Pool [email protected]

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.
2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.
3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request