Relation direction

[mkevenaar]

It would be nice to be able to know in a Relationship object what the direction of this relationship is.

Example:

$Index = new NodeIndex($client, 'node_auto_index');
$Node = $Index->findOne($key, addslashes('neo'));
$Node->getRelationships(array(),Relationship::DirectionAll);
if(count($Relations)){
    foreach($Relations as $Relation)
    {
        //How do I know here if I need start or end node?
        //would be nice if I could do:
        if($Relation->direction == Relationship::DirectionIn)
        {       
            //I need startnode
        } // and so on..
    }
}

[jadell]

Will this work?

if ($relation->getStartNode()->getId() == $node->getId()) {
    // $relation is outgoing from $node
} else {
    // $relation is incoming to $node
}

[mkevenaar]

that would work for now.

are you going to add this functionality in the Relationship object?

[jadell]

No. Asking for $relationship->direction doesn't make sense, because the answer changes depending on context, i. e. you can only ask what direction a relationship is from a specific node. A relationship doesn't have direction on it's own, so asking the relationship for its direction is meaningless.

If you want to know what direction a relationship is from a specific node, the only way to do that is to compare the node to either the start or end node of the relationship.

What problem are you trying to solve? Maybe there is another way to do it.