Directional Traversal

This page explains directional keywords for graph traversal. You can only specify direction using these keywords; bind parameters cannot be used for this purpose. Note that during traversal, the traverser may use the same edges multiple times. For example, it might walk from E to F and then from F back to E using the same edge, resulting in duplicate nodes in the results.

All previous examples in this section traversed the graph in the OUTBOUND edge direction. However, you might want to also traverse in reverse direction (INBOUND) or both (ANY). Because circles/A only has outbound edges, the queries below start traversing from circles/E:

The following examples are based on the traversal graph. If you create this example graph, then you can run any of the queries listed in this page.

OUTBOUND Example

The first traversal moves only in the forward (OUTBOUND) direction. Therefore, traversing from E only returns F.

Query:

FOR v IN 1..3 OUTBOUND 'circles/E' GRAPH 'traversalGraph'
    RETURN v._key

Result:

  [
    "F"
  ]

INBOUND Example

Moving in the reverse direction (INBOUND) returns the path to A: B → A.

Query:

FOR v IN 1..3 INBOUND 'circles/E' GRAPH 'traversalGraph'
    RETURN v._key

Result:

  [
    "B",
    "A"
  ]

ANY Example

Traversing in forward and reverse direction (ANY) returns a more diverse result. It includes the simple paths to F and A, but these vertices have edges in other directions and they are traversed.

Query:

FOR v IN 1..3 ANY 'circles/E' GRAPH 'traversalGraph'
    RETURN v._key

Result:

  [
    "F",
    "B",
    "C",
    "D",
    "A",
    "G"
  ]