Table of Contents

• ⚠️ Important/Notice
• Morpheus
  • About
• Installation
• Usage
  • Initial Configuration
  • Create Migrations
  • Run Migrations
• NestJs Integration
  • Module Registration
  • Do you have multiple instances that you want to run migrations on?
• How it works
  • How does neo4j keep track of the migrations?

⚠️ Important/Notice

• Attention: Version 2.x had a bug where the migrations versions where not being compared correctly. Please, don't use that version.

Morpheus

About

Morpheus is a database migration tool for Neo4j written in Typescript.

Morpheus is a modern, open-source, database migration tool for Neo4j. It is designed to be a simple, intuitive tool for database migrations. It is inspired by Michael Simons tool for Java.

This project has been tested with

• Neo4j 4.4.4
• Neo4j 5.x
• Neo4j Aura

Installation

Install the latest version of Morpheus:

npm install morpheus4j

Add a script to your project's package.json file:

"scripts": {
  "morpheus": "morpheus"
}

Usage

Initial Configuration

To run migrations, first you need to configure Morpheus. To do so, create a .morpheus.json file in your project root directory.

Or, you can use the init command:

npm run morpheus init

If you don't want to use a morpheus.json file, you can also use ENV variables as follows:

# This refers to the scheme used to connect to the database. https://neo4j.com/docs/upgrade-migration-guide/current/version-4/migration/drivers/new-uri-schemes/
MORPHEUS_SCHEME=neo4j

# This refers to the host of the database, don't include the port nor the scheme.
MORPHEUS_HOST=localhost

# This refers to the port of the database.
MORPHEUS_PORT=7687

# This refers to the username of the database.
MORPHEUS_USERNAME=neo4j

# This refers to the password of the database.
MORPHEUS_PASSWORD=neo4j

# This refers to the path where the migrations are located.
MORPHEUS_MIGRATIONS_PATH=neo4j/migrations # default value

Create Migrations

You can create/generate migrations using the morpheus create command or create the files manually.

For the first, just issue the command:

npm run morpheus create <migration_name>

Migrations will be created under the neo4j/migrations directory. Each migration will be a Cypher file following the format V<sem_ver>__<migration_name>.cypher.

If you want to create/add the migration manually make sure to follow the naming convention as stated in Michael's tool documentation.

Run Migrations

You can run migrations by running the following command:

npm run morpheus migrate

This will run all migrations in the neo4j/migrations directory.

NestJs Integration

You can use Morpheus with the NestJs framework.

Migrations will be run automatically when the application is started >

The biggest difference is that you don't need to create a .morpheus.json file and you can use any name for the ENV variables.

You can instantiate the module using the forRoot or forRootAsync methods.

Module registration

import { Module } from '@nestjs/common';
import { ConfigService, ConfigModule } from '@nestjs/config';
import { MorpheusModule } from 'morpheus4j';

@Module({
  imports: [
    // Sync register
    MorpheusModule.register({
      scheme: 'bolt',
      host: 'localhost',
      port: 7687,
      username: 'neo4j',
      password: 'password',
      migrationsPath: './neo4j/migrations', // default value
    }),
    // Async register
    MorpheusModule.registerAsync({
      imports: [ConfigModule],
      useFactory: (configService: ConfigService) => ({
        scheme: configService.get('MORPHEUS_SCHEME'),
        host: configService.get('MORPHEUS_HOST'),
        port: configService.get('MORPHEUS_PORT'),
        username: configService.get('MORPHEUS_USERNAME'),
        password: configService.get('MORPHEUS_PASSWORD'),
        migrationsPath: './neo4j/migrations', // default value
      }),
      inject: [ConfigService],
    }),
  ],
})
export class AppModule {}

Do you have multiple instances that you want to run migrations on?

You can check out this issue Multiple instances for more information.

How it works

The approach is simple. Morpheus will read all migrations in the neo4j/migrations directory and execute them in order.

For each migration, Morpheus will create a transaction and execute the migration. Thus a migration may contain multiple Cypher statements (each statement must end with ;).

Once a migration file is executed, Morpheus will keep track of the migration and will not execute em again.

Existing migration files that have already been executed can not be modified since they are stored in a database with their corresponding checksum (crc32).

If you want to revert a migration, create a new migration and revert the changes.

How does neo4j keep track of the migrations?

You can take a look at schema and explanation on Michael's README there's a neat graph that shows the migration chain.