Pattern Matching In Apache AGE

Pattern matching is one of the most fundamental operation in a database system. It has numerous use cases like validating form submissions, performing search and replace operations, cleaning and standardizing data, and searching for specific patterns in a database.
Functions provided by Apache AGE for this are as follows:

Starts With

Performs case-sensitive prefix searching on strings.

SELECT * FROM cypher('graph_name', $$
    MATCH (v:Person)
    WHERE v.name STARTS WITH "J"
    RETURN v.name
$$) AS (names agtype);

Contains

Performs case-sensitive inclusion searching in strings.

SELECT * FROM cypher('graph_name', $$
    MATCH (v:Person)
    WHERE v.name CONTAINS "o"
    RETURN v.name
$$) AS (names agtype);

Ends With

Performs case-sensitive suffix searching on strings.

SELECT * FROM cypher('graph_name', $$
    MATCH (v:Person)
    WHERE v.name ENDS WITH "n"
    RETURN v.name
$$) AS (names agtype);

Regular Expressions

Regex or regular expressions are special sequences used to find or match patterns in strings. AGE supports the use of POSIX regular expressions using the =~ operator.
Example:

SELECT * FROM cypher('graph_name', $$
    MATCH (v:Person)
    WHERE v.name =~ '(?i)JoHn'
    RETURN v.name
$$) AS (names agtype);

We can provide any regular expression after ~= and it will search for the strings that matches that expression.

The special characters used in regex include the backslash , the caret ^, the dollar sign $, the period or dot ., the vertical bar or pipe symbol |, the question mark ?, the asterisk or star *, the plus sign +, the opening parenthesis (, the closing parenthesis ), the opening square bracket [, and the opening curly brace {. These special characters are often called “metacharacters”.

The backslash \ is used to escape metacharacters so they can be treated as literal characters. The caret ^ is used to match the start of a string. The dollar sign $ is used to match the end of a string. The period or dot . is used to match any character except newline. The vertical bar or pipe symbol | is used to match either/or. The question mark ? is used to match zero or one of the preceding character. The asterisk or star * is used to match zero or more of the preceding character. The plus sign + is used to match one or more of the preceding character. The opening parenthesis ( and closing parenthesis ) are used for grouping. The opening square bracket [ and closing square bracket ] are used for character classes. The opening curly brace { and closing curly brace } are used for quantifiers.