CALL apoc.periodic.countdown seems to execute the statement immediately and then proceeded as documented

Feedback & Requests
1

For background context. I want to delete a node after waiting for a certain amount of time, so I created the query below to do it.

CALL apoc.periodic.countdown(
"delete",
"MATCH (e:example) DELETE e return 0",
30);

However, the database simply deleted the node immediately instead of waiting 30 seconds as intended, so I conducted an experiment like so:

CREATE (e:example) SET e.value = 10 return e;

CALL apoc.periodic.countdown(
"decrement",
"MATCH (e:example) SET e.value = e.value-1 return e.value",
30);

The example node immediately decrements by 1 AND THEN it decrements every 30 seconds as it should. What's up with that?

2

Since you are not interested in repeating the operation until a state is reached, you can try adding a 30 second delay with apoc’s sleep procedure instead.

3

Thanks for the solution!

I would need to do some integer tricks since my work requires the delays to be measured in days and hours, but it's a problem I can solve.

It seems inelegant to call a sleep and then call a countdown afterwards to delay the first statement execution but I'm going to mark this as solved.

4

Do you want to run the query once, but delayed 30 sec OR do you want it run every 30 seconds with a startup delay of 30 sec?

If the former, you don’t need the countdown.

5

Sorry that it wasnt clear. It is the former that I wanted but for future references where I DO need a countdown, apoc.periodic.countdown seems weird IMO