Shell is enabled from the configuration of the Neo4j kernel, see Section 17.2, “Server Configuration”. Here’s some sample configurations:

# Using default values
enable_remote_shell = true
# ...or specify custom port, use default values for the others
enable_remote_shell = port=1234

When using the Neo4j server, see Section 17.2, “Server Configuration” for how to add configuration settings in that case.

There are two ways to start the shell, either by connecting to a remote shell server or by pointing it to a Neo4j store path.

To start the shell and connect to a running server, run:

neo4j-shell

Alternatively supply -port and -name options depending on how the remote shell server was enabled. Then you’ll get the shell prompt like this:

neo4j-sh (0)$

To start the shell by just pointing it to a Neo4j store path you run the shell jar file. Given that the right neo4j-kernel-<version>.jar and jta jar files are in the same path as your neo4j-shell-<version>.jar file you run it with:

$ neo4j-shell -path path/to/neo4j-db

By issuing the -readonly switch when starting the shell with a store path, changes cannot be made to the database during the session.

$ neo4j-shell -readonly -path path/to/neo4j-db

It is possible to tell the shell to just start, execute a command and then exit. This opens up for uses of background jobs and also handling of huge output of f.ex. an ''ls'' command where you then could pipe the output to ''less'' or another reader of your choice, or even to a file. So some examples of usage:

$ neo4j-shell -c "cd -a 24 && set name Mattias"
$ neo4j-shell -c "trav -r KNOWS" | less