Return JSON of hierarchical data of varying depths (sport teams in different leagues)

[B-D-T]

I'm trying to create a JSON-stype output of sport teams from different leagues. The problem I'm having is that the leagues are of varying depths. For example...

• English Premier League: League > team
• WNBA: League > conference > team
• NBA: League > conference > division > team
• NCAA American football: All of the above at the same time

I can create a query for a league with a fixed number of levels, such as the EPL or NBA, but I'm stuck on leagues like collegiate American football (NCAA FBS), where team nodes are 0, 1, or 2 levels deep. I attached a few files that might help understand the problem:

• A json file with a simplified version of the desired output (7.0 KB)
• A cypher file to create a simplified version of the database (5.6 KB)
  • I also created this as a temporary neo4j sandbox, if that's easier
• Cypher queries to show what I've been able to do so far:
  • Level 0 - e.g., EPL, Bundesliga (326 Bytes)
  • Level 1 - e.g., WNBA, MLS (503 Bytes)
  • Level 2 - e.g., NBA, NFL (760 Bytes)

If this were python or something I could use a loop, but how can I do something similar in native cypher? I know I can't use a recursive query, so perhaps a UNION ALL with 3 subqueries, one for each level? Or using an apoc.case statement?

• neo4j version: browser with APOC

[mckenzma]

Welcome to the Neo4j Community!

This is an interesting problem for sure. One way to model this would be to connect the team to each portion of the substructure:

(:Team)-[:COMPETES_IN]->(:League)
(:Team)-[:COMPETES_IN]->(:Substructure1)
(:Team)-[:COMPETES_IN]->(:Substructure2)

and then connect your substructures:

(:League)-[:HAS_SUBSTRUCTURE]->(:Substructure1)-[:HAS_SUBSTRUCTURE]->(:Substructure2)

Then you have a link to your team at each level down into your substructure and can use that depending on how deep you want to go.

I think at this point you could use a query like

MATCH (:League)-[:HAS_SUBSTRUCTURE*0..]->(sub)

where the *0.. says to start at depth level 0 and go out as far as your can following the HAS_SUBSTRUCTURE relationship type.

This what comes to mind initially as I look at what you are trying to do. I am sure there are some other ways of modeling this too.