Installing Neo4j and Cypher-Shell For Use with Neo4j Aura

Apr 4, 2025
Knowledge

Details

As a Neo4j Aura customer, you may not have installed Neo4j anywhere since you are utilizing our cloud product. This makes complete sense, but if you want to utilize the cypher-shell tool, you need to install it. This article shows you how to install Neo4j on linux so you can have access to cypher-shell.

(Note: you can also download cypher-shell at https://neo4j.com/deployment-center/#tools-tab)

Find or create an instance, machine with Ubuntu (or similar linux) installed. Then execute these commands to add the neotechnology repository and install Neo4j (including cypher-shell):

$ wget -O - https://debian.neo4j.com/neotechnology.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
$ echo 'deb https://debian.neo4j.com stable latest' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/neo4j.list;sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:openjdk-r/ppa;
$ sudo apt-get update;
$ sudo apt-get install neo4j -y;
$ sudo systemctl enable neo4j.service;
$ sudo systemctl start neo4j.service;

Now you have Neo4j installed, including cypher-shell:

cypher-shell -h

usage: cypher-shell [-h] [-a ADDRESS] [-u USERNAME] [--impersonate IMPERSONATE] [-p PASSWORD] [--encryption {true,false,default}] [-d DATABASE] [--format {auto,verbose,plain}] [-P PARAM] [--non-interactive] [--sample-rows SAMPLE-ROWS]

                    [--wrap {true,false}] [-v] [--driver-version] [-f FILE] [--change-password] [--log [LOG-FILE]] [--fail-fast | --fail-at-end] [cypher]

A command line shell where you can execute Cypher against an instance of Neo4j. By default the shell is interactive but  you  can use it for scripting by passing cypher directly on the command line or by piping a file with cypher statements

(requires Powershell on Windows).


example of piping a file:

  cat some-cypher.txt | cypher-shell

positional arguments:

  cypher                 an optional string of cypher to execute and then exit

named arguments:

  -h, --help             show this help message and exit

  --fail-fast            exit and report failure on first error when reading from file (this is the default behavior)

  --fail-at-end          exit and report failures at end of input when reading from file

  --format {auto,verbose,plain}

                         desired output format, verbose displays results in tabular format and prints statistics, plain displays data with minimal formatting (default: auto)

  -P PARAM, --param PARAM

                         Add a parameter to this session. Example: `-P "number => 3"` or `-P "country => 'Spain'"`. This argument can be specified multiple times. (default: [])

  --non-interactive      force non-interactive mode, only useful if auto-detection fails (like on Windows) (default: false)

  --sample-rows SAMPLE-ROWS

                         number of rows sampled to compute table widths (only for format=VERBOSE) (default: 1000)

  --wrap {true,false}    wrap table column values if column is too narrow (only for format=VERBOSE) (default: true)

  -v, --version          print version of cypher-shell and exit (default: false)

  --driver-version       print version of the Neo4j Driver used and exit (default: false)

  -f FILE, --file FILE   Pass a file with cypher statements to be executed. After the statements have been executed cypher-shell will be shutdown

  --change-password      change neo4j user password and exit (default: false)

  --log [LOG-FILE]       enable logging to the specified file, or standard error if the file is omitted


connection arguments:

  -a ADDRESS, --address ADDRESS, --uri ADDRESS

                         address and port to connect to, defaults to neo4j://localhost:7687. Can also be specified using environment variable NEO4J_ADDRESS or NEO4J_URI

  -u USERNAME, --username USERNAME

                         username to connect as. Can also be specified using environment variable NEO4J_USERNAME

  --impersonate IMPERSONATE

                         user to impersonate.

  -p PASSWORD, --password PASSWORD

                         password to connect with. Can also be specified using environment variable NEO4J_PASSWORD

  --encryption {true,false,default}

                         whether the connection to Neo4j should be encrypted. This must  be  consistent  with  Neo4j's  configuration.  If  choosing  'default'  the  encryption  setting is deduced from the specified address. For example the

                         'neo4j+ssc' protocol would use encryption. (default: default)

  -d DATABASE, --database DATABASE

                         database to connect to. Can also be specified using environment variable NEO4J_DATABASE