How to find the shortest path with the minimum number of hops in Neo4j?

Question

Im modeling a graph where nodes are places and edges indicate that you can go from one place to another.

This is to have all routes that you can take from a place to another, and you can go from a place to another by different routes, so I want a query that returns me the shortest path with the minimum route changes.

For example, I want to go from A to D, I have two possible paths:

(place {name: "A"})-[:FOLLOWS{route:""R1}]->(place{name: "B" })-[:FOLLOWS{route:""R4}]->(place{name:"C"})-[:FOLLOWS{route:""R2}]->(place{name:"D"})

(place {name: "A"})-[:FOLLOWS{route:""R1}]->(place{name: "B" })-[:FOLLOWS{route:""R1}]->(place{name:"F"})-[:FOLLOWS{route:""R2}]->(place{name:"D"})

In the previous two path, both are the same size, but I would like to get the second one, which is the one who has the minimum route changes.

Thank you.

Answer 1

@DevBennett's answer gets the shortest path with the minimum number of route changes.

To get the shortest path with the minimum number of different routes, which is what the question literally asked for (but which may not have been what the asker actually wanted), you can use this query:

MATCH p=ALLSHORTESTPATHS((a:Place {name: "A"})-[:FOLLOWS*]->(d:Place{name:"D"}))
UNWIND RELATIONSHIPS(p) AS rel 
WITH p, COUNT(DISTINCT rel.route) AS nRoutes 
RETURN p, nRoutes 
ORDER BY nRoutes 
LIMIT 1;