Importing Neo4J Database from GrapheneDB to Local

Question

I have created an app that uses a Neo4J database. I developed a local instance in Windows, purchased some space on a development GrapheneDB server, migrated my database, and had a few users test out my app. There are a few issues in my application that I wish to debug. I want to do development on a copy of their data only on my local instance of Neo4j. GrapheneDB offers the ability to download a graph.db.zip file that contains the contents of the database. How do I import this file using Neo4j desktop? It appears Neo4J desktop only imports csv files. I tried overwriting the graph.db folder with the contents of the zip file and my database doesn't appear in my Neo4J desktop. How do I import my GrapheneDB to my local?

Answer 1

Two approaches that are probably fairly similar under the hood:

Use neo4j-admin

• Create a local graph in Neo4j Desktop
  • I used the same graph name as I'd used in Graphene
  • Make sure the database version is the same as is in Graphene
• Do not start the database yet but instead click Manage, then the Terminal tab
• Unzip the contents of the graphdb.zip file somewhere local - say, C:\Temp\graphdb for this example
• Run neo4j-admin restore --from="C:\temp\graphdb"
• Start the database using Neo4j Desktop
• You should have a working database

File copying by hand

• Create a local graph in Neo4j Desktop
  • I used the same graph name as I'd used in Graphene
  • Make sure the database version is the same as is in Graphene
• Do not start the database yet but instead click Manage, then Open Folder
• Enter the databases folder - it should be empty
• Create a new folder called graph.db (the name needs to be exact)
• Copy the contents of the graphdb.zip file into the new graph.db folder
• Start the database using Neo4j Desktop
• You should have a working database

I tested this on a graph with only one node, but it did work - I suspect the database version matching is pretty vital.