[Neo] ID's for entities?

[Johan Svensson]

Hi,

Yes it is true that Neo4j will reuse ids when possible so you can't
rely on them being unique.

Since you need unique ids I would suggest using a high/low id
generator storing the high id as a property on some node. We have used
that several times in different projects and it has worked well. So
something like:

public class IdGenerator
{
    private final Node underlyingNode;
    private static final int GRAB_SIZE = 10000;

    private long nextId;
    private long highId;

    public IdGenerator( Node underlyingNode )
    {
        this.underlyingNode = underlyingNode;
        bumpHighId();
    }

    @Transactional
    private void bumpHighId()
    {
        nextId = (Long) underlyingNode.getProperty( "high_id" );
        highId = nextId + GRAB_SIZE;
        underlyingNode.setProperty( "high_id", highId );
    }

    public synchronized long getNextUniqueId()
    {
        long uniqueId = nextId++;
        if ( nextId >= highId )
        {
            bumpHighId();
        }
        return uniqueId;
    }
}

Regards,
Johan

On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 12:05 PM, Peter
Neubauer<neubauer.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Mattias,
> yes, I think you can't rely on Neo4j's IDs to be unique and static
> forever. IMHO adding an "ID" attribute to the nodes and then putting
> in some ID like
>
> public static String generateRandomID() {
>        // e.g. from gtalk 6D56433B
>        Random random = new Random();
>        StringBuilder b = new StringBuilder();
>        for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
>            int x = random.nextInt(36);
>            if (x < 10)
>                b.append(x);
>            else
>                b.append(((char) (x + 55)));
>
>        }
>        return b.toString();
>    }
>
>
> would be better. Anyone else having an opinion?
>
> /peter
>
> GTalk:      neubauer.peter
> Skype       peter.neubauer
> Phone       +46 704 106975
> LinkedIn   http://www.linkedin.com/in/neubauer
> Twitter      http://twitter.com/peterneubauer
>
> http://www.neo4j.org     - New Energy for Data - The Graph Database.
> http://www.ops4j.org     - New Energy for OSS Communities - Open
> Participation Software.
> http://www.oredev.org   - Where Good Geeks Grok.
> Sent from Malmo, Skåne, Sweden
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Mattias Ask<mattias.ask at jayway.se> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'll probably come off as a total noob now, but I thought that I'd ask
>> here first and then give it a try if I don't get a nifty solution from
>> you guys... I need unique id's for some of my nodes, and was wondering
>> how you have solved this? I have something in the back of my head that
>> says that I can't use the NodeId, since I seem to recall that those
>> are re-used when e.g. deleting a node... right?
>>
>> Best regards, Mattias Ask
>> -------------------------------------------
>> Jayway AB, +46 701 469284
>> www.jayway.com
>>
>> Jayway is the founder of Öredev and Qi4J
>> www.oredev.org
>> www.qi4j.org