How to perform searches using Full-text search indexes?

Searches can be performed on a Full-text search index in the following ways:

• Specific attribute (complete match)
• Logical operator (AND / OR)
• Single-character wildcard (?)
• Multi-character wildcard (*)
• Fuzzy search (~)

Creating a Full-text search index:

We will be using an example search index created on the titles for the Movie nodes in the default Movies graph:

CREATE FULLTEXT INDEX movieNamesIndex FOR (m:Movie) ON EACH [m.title]

Performing searches

Specific attribute (complete match):

Search for movies that have the word “matrix” in their title.

CALL db.index.fulltext.queryNodes("movieNamesIndex", "title:matrix") 
YIELD node, score
RETURN node.title as title, score

Results:

Logical operator:

There are two logical operators available, “OR” and “AND”.
Search for movies that have the words "the" OR "matrix" in their title.

CALL db.index.fulltext.queryNodes("movieNamesIndex", "title:'the' OR 'matrix'") 
YIELD node, score
RETURN node.title as title, score

Results:

Single-character wildcard:

The single-character wildcard operator ? looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced.

CALL db.index.fulltext.queryNodes("movieNamesIndex", "title:ma?") YIELD node, score
RETURN node.title as title, score

Results:

Multi-character wildcard:

The multi-character wildcard  * operator looks for zero or more characters. You can also put the operator in the middle of the term like ma*x. To prevent extremely slow wildcard queries, a term should not start with the wildcard. Bad example: *trix .

CALL db.index.fulltext.queryNodes("movieNamesIndex", "title:ma*") YIELD node, score
RETURN node.title as title, score

Results:

Fuzzy search:

Fuzzy search  ~ works by using mathematical formulae that calculate the similarity between two words.

CALL db.index.fulltext.queryNodes("movieNamesIndex", "title:ma~") YIELD node, score
RETURN node.title as title, score

Results: