Return Node/Relationship from where method

[zakjan]

Hi,

Currently Node/Relationship.where method is implemented returning PatternElement. Can it return Node/Relationship, similar to Node/Relationship.withProperties?

This is to allow constructing such Node/Relationship in a separate method, to be able to use it where Node/Relationship is expected, not only in match clause.

The simplest way to do this seems to be moving PatternElement.where to ExposesProperties.

[michael-simons]

But conceptionaly it is the PatternElement that spots the (Inner) where clause.
You can safely cast it.

[zakjan]

Ok, it's possible to cast it in the current version.

My point is that users could expect the same behavior for both withProperties and where, because both specify where conditions. Although with a different Cypher syntax.

withProperties and where are almost the same, with a slight conceptual difference that node.where(node...) requires a named node already. Potentially there could be another overloaded where method with lambda (Consumer) argument. Or it could even be the only method, to prevent devs from the mistake of passing another node instance or an arbitrary condition irrelevant to the node.