How to change/update a label in Neo4j - Cypher?

Question

Is it possible to change a label on a node using Cypher? I have a node with label Book, as shown below. I want to change the Book label to DeletedBook.

(u:Person)-[r]-(b:Book{id:id1})

(u:Person)-[r]-(b:DeletedBook{id:id1})

Answer 1

You can do that using REMOVE on the Book label and SET on the new label:

MATCH (p:Person)-[r]-(b:Book {id: id1})
REMOVE b:Book
SET b:DeletedBook
RETURN b

You should check out the Neo4j Cypher Refcard for a complete reference to Cypher 2.x.

Answer 2

You can use 'REMOVE' for removing and SET for adding new label.

eg:

MATCH (p:Person)-[r]-(b:Book {id: id1})
REMOVE b:Book
SET b:DeletedBook
RETURN b

Best practice is to add a 'delete' label to the node we want to delete. Don't remove the label of a node when we update.

MATCH (p:Person)-[r]-(b:Book {id: id1})
SET b: Deleted
RETURN b

so book node will have 2 labels (:Book:Deleted)