Cypher Query to only return a limited amount of connected nodes

Neo4j Graph Platform Cypher
1

I have a graph with “Chunk” nodes that each have about 5 connected nodes of various types. I would like to know a cypher query which returns every “Chunk” node and say only 3 connected nodes per “Chunk” node.
I already tried asking LLMs and Google, but couldn’t find anything.

2

I actually tried Duck.ai again and got something which works:

MATCH (c:Chunk)
OPTIONAL MATCH (c)<-[r]-(p)
WITH c, r, p
ORDER BY r // Specify an order if needed
WITH c, COLLECT(p)[..3] AS limited_p, COLLECT(r)[..3] AS limited_r
RETURN c, limited_r, limited_p

If someone has insight into up- and downsides for this, im always ears, will close this for now though.

3

You can use subqueries to accomplish this.

A subquery will execute per incoming row, so if you match on the :Chunk nodes and use a subquery, it will execute per chunk. The LIMIT will be scoped to the individual subquery execution (in this case per :Chunk) which should be what you want:

MATCH (c:Chunk)
CALL (c) {
  MATCH (c)<-[r]-(p)
  RETURN p
  LIMIT 3
}

RETURN c, p

If you want to collect the nodes into a list, then you can use a collect {} subquery instead:

MATCH (c:Chunk)

WITH c, collect {
  MATCH (c)<-[r]-(p)
  RETURN p
  LIMIT 3
} as pList

RETURN c, pList

There are other ways to alter these, in case you want to collect the paths, or have separate lists for the relationships and nodes.