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UNWIND clause

The UNWIND clause is used to unwind a list of values as individual rows.

  1. Unwinding lists
  2. Distinct list
  3. Expression returning lists
  4. Unwinding lists of lists

1. Unwinding lists​

Use UNWIND to transform a literal list into rows:

UNWIND [1,2,3] AS listElement
RETURN listElement;

Output:

+-------------+
| listElement |
+-------------+
| 1           |
| 2           |
| 3           |
+-------------+

2. Distinct list​

The UNWIND clause can be used to remove duplicates from a list:

WITH [1,1,1,2,2,3] AS list
UNWIND list AS listElement
RETURN collect(DISTINCT listElement) AS distinctElements;

Output:

+------------------+
| distinctElements |
+------------------+
| [1, 2, 3]        |
+------------------+

3. Expression returning lists​

An expression that returns a list can be used with the UNWIND clause:

WITH [1,2,3] AS listOne, [4,5,6] AS listTwo
UNWIND (listOne + listTwo) AS list
RETURN list;

Output:

+------+
| list |
+------+
| 1    |
| 2    |
| 3    |
| 4    |
| 5    |
| 6    |
+------+

4. Unwinding lists of lists​

Multiple UNWIND clauses can be combined to unwind nested lists:

WITH [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9]] AS listOne
UNWIND listOne AS listOneElement
UNWIND listOneElement AS element
RETURN element;

Output:

+---------+
| element |
+---------+
| 1       |
| 2       |
| 3       |
| 4       |
| 5       |
| 6       |
| 7       |
| 8       |
| 9       |
+---------+