Cypher Neo4J - CASE Expression with MERGE

Question

I\'m trying to implement the logic in Cypher where, based on a particular condition (CASE Statement), I would create some nodes and relationships; the code is

Answer 1

To do conditional write operations you need to use the FOREACH trick. Using CASE you either return a one element array or a empty one. FOREACH iterates over the CASE expression and therefore conditionally executes the action. If you want an ELSE part as well you need to have a another FOREACH using the inverse condition in the CASE. As an example, instead of

WHEN 'y' THEN
   MERGE (u)-[r2:STAGE {startdate:20141225, enddate:'99999999', status:'InProgress'}]->(b2     {fork:'fail'}) RETURN 1
ELSE 
    MERGE (u)-[r2:STAGE {startdate:20141225, enddate:'99999999', status:'InProgress'}]->(b2)   RETURN 2
END

use

FOREACH(ignoreMe IN CASE WHEN 'y' THEN [1] ELSE [] END | 
    MERGE (u)-[r2:STAGE {startdate:20141225, enddate:'99999999', status:'InProgress'}]->(b2 {fork:'fail'})
)
FOREACH(ignoreMe IN CASE WHEN NOT 'y' THEN [1] ELSE [] END | 
    MERGE (u)-[r2:STAGE {startdate:20141225, enddate:'99999999', status:'InProgress'}]->(b2)
)

See also Mark's blog post on this.