Cannot get spring-data-neo4j to connect to remote database - spring

Question

I am building a small proof of concept Spring Boot app which is supposed to connect to a Neo4j instance and perform some basic operations on a couple of different Nodes. If I have the main application class wired to create an embedded Neo4j service using the following code, everything works fine. (this is based on the working example https://spring.io/guides/gs/accessing-neo4j-data-rest/)
#Bean(destroyMethod = "shutdown")
public GraphDatabaseService graphDatabaseService() {
return new GraphDatabaseFactory().newEmbeddedDatabase("target/hello.db");
}
This is the only code sample I can find though for connecting to a Neo4j server from spring boot. If I try connecting to a remote server, the code fails to start with the exception at the end of this question. Our plan is to run a centralized Neo4j instance which is obviously a common production requirement.
How can or should I configure my bean to connect to a remote Neo4j database or is anyone aware of a solid working example of this kind of setup?
Thanks!
My pom.xml includes the following:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-rest</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-data-neo4j</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-data-neo4j-rest</artifactId>
<version>3.3.0.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
<artifactId>hibernate-validator</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
I have seen several references to using SpringCypherRestGraphDatabase so I have this being handled in my Main application class is as follows:
import org.neo4j.graphdb.GraphDatabaseService;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.data.neo4j.config.EnableNeo4jRepositories;
import org.springframework.data.neo4j.config.Neo4jConfiguration;
import org.springframework.data.neo4j.rest.SpringCypherRestGraphDatabase;
#SpringBootApplication
#EnableNeo4jRepositories
public class ProfileServiceApplication extends Neo4jConfiguration {
public ProfileServiceApplication() {
setBasePackage("profile");
}
#Bean
public GraphDatabaseService graphDatabaseService() {
return new SpringCypherRestGraphDatabase("http://localhost:7474/db/data/","neo4j","password");
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(ProfileServiceApplication.class, args);
}
}
When I try to run with this configuration, I get the following error:
nested exception is org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: Failed to instantiate [org.neo4j.graphdb.GraphDatabaseService]: Circular reference involving containing bean 'profileServiceApplication' - consider declaring the factory method as static for independence from its containing instance. Factory method 'graphDatabaseService' threw exception; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/springframework/data/neo4j/core/UpdateableState
at org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.postProcessPropertyValues(AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.java:334)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.populateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1210)

Answer 1

Please share your application as github-project for testing. Perhaps it is also a dependency issue of the spring-boot-starter? Which boot version are you using??
Perhaps you can check mvn dependency:tree if there is any older version of SDN pulled in and if so, update the neo4-version-property for the spring-boot-starter.
Example application is here:
http://neo4j.com/developer/java/#_using_spring_data_neo4j
and it is also in the docs as you correctly saw:
http://docs.spring.io/spring-data/data-neo4j/docs/3.3.0.RELEASE/reference/html/#using_spring_data_neo4j_as_a_neo4j_server_client

Answer 2

The reference which you are giving doesn't contain Neo4j URL.
Hence Here is Application.properties file to connect to your Neo4j.
spring.data.neo4j.uri=bolt://localhost
spring.data.neo4j.username=neo4j
spring.data.neo4j.password=Your_Password
Start your Neo4j Database as a console application which will run on localhost:7474 port most probably.
command to start:
neo4j console
Also check the dependency. As the latest version work with only
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-neo4j</artifactId>
</dependency>