Ordering and Limits

Ordering results

You can order the results of a query using the ORDER BY clause.

This query finds all the people born in 1980 and orders them by their birth date:

cypher

MATCH (p:Person)
WHERE p.born.year = 1980
RETURN p.born AS birthDate
ORDER BY p.born

You can split dates into their components using the year, month, and day properties.

You can order by one or more columns, and specify the order as ascending (ASC) or descending (DESC).

cypher

MATCH (p:Person)
WHERE p.born.year = 1980
RETURN p.name AS name, p.born AS birthDate
ORDER BY p.born DESC, p.name ASC

The number of results returned by a query can be limited using the LIMIT clause.

This query finds the first 5 movies released in the year 2000:

cypher

MATCH (m:Movie)
WHERE m.year = 2000
ORDER BY m.released
RETURN m.title, m.released
LIMIT 5

Complete the queries to find the following data:

Steven Spielberg movies, ordered by the year they were released.

cypher

MATCH (p:Person)-[:DIRECTED]->(m:??????)
WHERE p.???? = "Steven Spielberg"
????? ?? m.released
RETURN m.title, m.released

Return the top 10 most recently released movies

cypher

MATCH (m:Movie)
????? ?? m.released ????
RETURN m.title, m.released
????? 10

Click to reveal the answers

Return Steven Spielberg movies, ordered by the year they were released.

cypher

MATCH (p:Person)-[:DIRECTED]->(m:Movie)
WHERE p.name = "Steven Spielberg"
ORDER BY m.released
RETURN m.title, m.released

Return the top 10 most recently released movies

cypher

MATCH (m:Movie)
ORDER BY m.released DESC
RETURN m.title, m.released
LIMIT 10

In this lesson, you learned how to order and limit the returned results.