Cypher CREATE Clause: Adding Nodes & Relationships to Your Graph [Byte-Sized Cypher Series]
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**Welcome to Byte-**Sized Cypher! This is a short, beginner-friendly video series that teaches the openCypher query language through clear, practical examples and memorable snack-based metaphors 🍘.
In this series, DevRel legend and snack enthusiast Jason Koo breaks down the most important openCypher clauses into small, digestible episodes. openCypher is the open source version of the Cypher query language originally created by Neo4j, and is designed specifically for working with graph databases and highly connected data.
Just to clarify: Jason doesn’t work for gdotv, but we’re big fans of this video series, and with his permission, we’re sharing these videos with our blog readers. We hope this series helps you master the Cypher query language – or even just get comfortable with using it for the very first time!
This week, we’ll include the intro to the series and the first Cypher clause you’ll learn: CREATE.
Series Introduction: Welcome to Byte-Sized Cypher!
Cypher uses an ASCII-style syntax that visually represents nodes (a.k.a. vertexes) and relationships (a.k.a. edges), making it easier to read, write, and reason about complex data structures. Throughout the series, you’ll see how openCypher works across multiple graph database implementations that support the openCypher standard.
To make each lesson concrete, every episode is paired with a popular Japanese snack, from classics like Pocky and Ramune to regional and seasonal favorites. These snacks serve as real-world examples as you build and run actual Cypher queries, helping abstract graph concepts feel intuitive and practical.
By the end of Byte-Sized Cypher, you’ll be able to build a fully functional graph-powered snack database, with use cases such as:
- Creating a personal snack inventory 😋
- Mapping regional Japanese snacks for travel planning 🗾
- Building a gift recommendation engine based on flavor preferences 🎁
If you’re new to graph databases, Cypher, or openCypher, this series will give you a strong foundation while showing how these tools can be used in real-world applications. Grab your favorite snack, fire up your database, and let’s start building graphs!
The Cypher CREATE Clause: Adding Nodes & Relationships to Your Graph
Welcome to Episode 1 of Byte-Sized Cypher!
In this episode, Jason introduces the Cypher CREATE clause, the foundation of all graph databases. You’ll learn how to add nodes and relationships to a graph database step by step, using examples inspired by Calbee potato chips.
He starts with the simplest CREATE statement and explains how nodes are represented in graph databases like Neo4j, Memgraph, and FalkorDB. From there, you’ll layer in essential concepts including:
- Creating nodes with the CREATE clause
- Adding labels to categorize nodes
- Using properties to store data on nodes
- Supported property value types (strings, numbers, booleans, lists, maps, temporal and spatial data)
- Differences in ID handling across graph databases
- Best practices and anti-patterns when storing complex data
- Creating relationships with direction and relationship types
- Building long relationship chains in a single CREATE statement
By the end of this video, you’ll understand how graph databases explicitly model relationships and how to quickly populate a graph with meaningful connected data using Cypher.
This episode sets the groundwork for the rest of the Byte-Sized Cypher series, where we’ll explore clauses like MATCH, RETURN, WHERE, SET, MERGE, and more.
Here are a few links to further resources, tools, and graph databases mentioned in the video:
- openCypher: https://opencypher.org
- gdotv: gdotv.com
- FalkorDB: https://www.falkordb.com
- Memgraph: https://memgraph.com
- Neo4j: https://neo4j.com/docs/cypher-manual/current/introduction/
See You at the Next Episode of Byte-Sized Cypher!
Hungry for more Cypher? Check out the full series playlist here as Jason is always adding more videos. If you enjoyed this video, subscribe to Jason Koo’s YouTube channel for more great videos on graph technology and other great developer tools, platforms, and languages.
Need a break between snacks? Catch the next episode of Byte-Sized Cypher here on the gdotv blog every Monday. See you there!
About the author
Bryce Merkl Sasaki
Former Head of Marketing
Bryce Merkl Sasaki is a writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. A digital nomad and total nerd, he’s wandered the worlds of database and graph tech for more than a decade, covering big moments, interviewing interesting minds, and bringing abstract graph concepts back down to earth. Outside of work, he enjoys hikes with his wife in Northern California and writes on his science fiction novel.
