Neo4j : best alternative to storing nested properties?

Question

I have an existing live neo4j db with relationships like this...

User-[:Owner]->Item

User contains the usual properties; name, email etc.
Owner relationship has created_on property
Item has a bunch of properties about the item; title, description etc.

I want to add in a geo-location property for the Item. This will be a latitude and longitude of where the user created the item.

A JSON api is serving up this data to our clients. The API will merge some of the data, so an Item object in the api will have a nested User object as a property of it...

"item": {
   "title":"my item",
   "user":{
        "name":"smith"
   }
}

And I was initially thinking the location would follow suit...

"item": {
   "title":"my item",
   "user":{
        "name":"smith"
   },
   "geo_position":{
       "latitude":"10.123456789",
       "longitude":"10.123456789" 
   }
}

As we cant nest data in Neo, was wondering how to store this data...

1. JSON serialise the latitude and longitude data under a geo_position property of the Item ?
2. As properties of the relationship Owner.latitude?
3. As a new Node ? Location `User-[:owns]->Mite<-[:created_at]-Location?
4. As individual properties of the Item so not nested, item.latitude ?

1 - I assume we cant query.
2 - doesn't feel like the right place.
3 - its extremely unlikely 2 Items will have the same location as lat long is very precise, so almost No Items will share this node, so is it really a node?

So is 4 really the way to do it, and just not nest them ?

m

Answer 1

You own analysis is basically correct. I would go with number 4.

Here is more about why number 2 is not a good idea. Logically: the location of an item belongs in that item's node, not in a particular relationship to it. Practically: if the object changed ownership you should not have to copy its location to a new relationship, and querying for an item's location should be as quick and simple as just getting its node.