Overview

The ORDER BY statement allows you to sort the current working table based on a list of specifications.

<order by statement> ::= 
  "ORDER BY" <sort specification> [ { "," <sort specification> }... ]

<sort specification> ::=
  <value expression> [ <ordering specification> ] [ <null ordering> ]

<ordering specification> ::= "ASC" | "DESC"

<null ordering> ::= "NULLS FIRST" | "NULLS LAST"

Details

• When no ordering specification is provided, ASC (ascending) is applied by default. To reverse the order, you can explicitly use the DESC (descending) keyword.
• NULLS FIRST and NULLS LAST can be used to control whether null values appear before or after non-null values when ordering the result. When null ordering is not explicitly specified:
  • NULLS LAST is applied by default when effectively ordering in ASC order.
  • NULLS FIRST is applied by default when effectively ordering in DESC order.

Example Graph

The following examples run against this graph:

To create this graph, run the following query against an empty graph:

INSERT (p1:Paper {_id:'P1', title:'Efficient Graph Search', score:6, author:'Alex', publisher:'PulsePress'}),
       (p2:Paper {_id:'P2', title:'Optimizing Queries', score:9, author:'Alex'}),
       (p3:Paper {_id:'P3', title:'Path Patterns', score:7, author:'Zack', publisher:'BrightLeaf'}),
       (p1)-[:Cites {weight:2}]->(p2),
       (p2)-[:Cites {weight:1}]->(p3)

Ordering by Property

The table can be sorted by the values of a specified property.

MATCH (n:Paper)
ORDER BY n.score
RETURN n.title, n.score

Result:

Ordering by Element Variable

When an element variable is specified, the table is sorted on the _uuid of the nodes or edges.

MATCH (n:Paper)
RETURN n.title, element_id(n) ORDER BY n

Result:

Ordering by Expression

The table can be sorted by the results produced by an expression.

MATCH p = (:Paper)->{1,2}(:Paper)
RETURN p, path_length(p) AS length ORDER BY length DESC

Result:

Multi-level Ordering

When there are multiple specifications, the table is sorted by the first specification listed, and for equals values, go to the next specification, and so on.

MATCH (n:Paper)
RETURN n.title, n.author, n.score 
ORDER BY n.author DESC, n.score

Result:

Discarding and Retaining Records After Ordering

You may use the SKIP and LIMIT statements in combination with the ORDER BY statement to skip a specified number of records from the beginning of the table and to limit the number of records retained.

This query returns the titles of the two papers with the second and third highest scores:

MATCH (n:Paper)
RETURN n.title, n.score
ORDER BY n.score DESC SKIP 1 LIMIT 2

Result:

Null Ordering

NULLS FIRST and NULLS LAST can be used to control whether null values appear before or after non-null values when ordering the result.

This query returns the titles of the two papers with the second and third highest scores:

MATCH (n:Paper)
RETURN n.title, n.publisher
ORDER BY n.publisher NULLS FIRST

Result: