ORDER BY

Without ORDER BY, row order is not guaranteed. Supply all needed tie-breakers when you require a reproducible sequence. Arithmetic and concatenation in the sort key use each source fragment’s stored type. A fragment that cannot apply the operator sorts as null.

MATCH (p:Person)
RETURN p.name AS name, p.age AS age
ORDER BY age DESC, name ASC;

ASCENDING and DESCENDING are synonyms for ASC and DESC. Nulls compare as greatest by default; override that with NULLS FIRST or NULLS LAST.

FOR n IN [2, NULL, 1]
RETURN n ORDER BY n ASC NULLS LAST;

Ordering can refer to output aliases, including element aliases and their properties. With DISTINCT, ordering expressions must depend on projected results. The same arithmetic expression can be repeated:

FOR n IN [1, 1, 2]
RETURN DISTINCT n + 1 AS value ORDER BY n + 1 DESC;

This returns 3 then 2. Aggregate queries may order by available grouping and aggregate expressions, including an arithmetic grouping value written again in ORDER BY. Another input reference is an invalid query.

A float aggregate can also be repeated:

FOR n IN [1, 2, 1]
RETURN DISTINCT n AS k, AVG(n) AS average ORDER BY AVG(n) DESC;

This returns 2/2.0 then 1/1.0. Sums, minimums, maximums, standard deviations and percentiles follow the same rule.

After UNION, INTERSECT, EXCEPT, or OTHERWISE, a trailing ORDER BY sorts the combined rows.

A property read from several fragments must use one comparable family. Integers and floats stay one family and sort numerically. Boolean, string, and byte-string values do not sort as one another or as numbers. Mixing those families is an invalid query, rather than ordering the string form of each cell. A fragment that does not store the property contributes null and does not add a family.

ORDER BY can also appear in the linear pipeline before the result clause. A later operation can affect row order; put the final ORDER BY with the result when ordering matters to the caller.

An earlier LIMIT or OFFSET selects its window before a later ORDER BY. That later sort reorders only the selected rows.

FOR n IN [10, 20, 30]
ORDER BY n ASC
OFFSET 1
ORDER BY n DESC
RETURN n;