FOR

The versatile FOR keyword can be used to iterate over a collection or View, all elements of an array or to traverse a graph.

General Syntax

FOR variableName IN expression

There is also a special variant for graph traversals:

FOR vertexVariableName, edgeVariableName, pathVariableName IN traversalExpression

For Fulltext Search Views, there is a special (optional) SEARCH keyword:

FOR variableName IN viewName SEARCH searchExpression

Note that Views cannot be used as edge collections in traversals:

FOR v IN 1..3 ANY startVertex viewName /* invalid! */

Each array element returned by expression is visited exactly once. It is required that expression returns an array in all cases. The empty array is allowed, too. The current array element is made available for further processing in the variable specified by variableName.

FOR u IN users
  RETURN u

This will iterate over all elements from the array users (note: this array consists of all documents from the collection named "users" in this case) and make the current array element available in variable u. u is not modified in this example but simply pushed into the result using the RETURN keyword.

note

When iterating over collection-based arrays as shown here, the order of documents is undefined unless an explicit sort order is defined using a SORT statement.

The variable introduced by FOR is available until the scope the FOR is placed in is closed.

Another example that uses a statically declared array of values to iterate over:

FOR year IN [ 2011, 2012, 2013 ]
  RETURN { "year" : year, "isLeapYear" : year % 4 == 0 && (year % 100 != 0 || year % 400 == 0) }

Nesting of multiple FOR statements is allowed, too. When FOR statements are nested, a cross product of the array elements returned by the individual FOR statements will be created.

FOR u IN users
  FOR l IN locations
    RETURN { "user" : u, "location" : l }

In this example, there are two array iterations: an outer iteration over the array users plus an inner iteration over the array locations. The inner array is traversed as many times as there are elements in the outer array. For each iteration, the current values of users and locations are made available for further processing in the variable u and l.

Options

For collections and views, the FOR construct supports an optional OPTIONS suffix to modify behavior. The general syntax is:

FOR variableName IN expression OPTIONS {option: value, ...}

Index hints

For collections, index hints are provided though this inline options mechanism. Hints can be specified in two different formats.

The first format option is the simplest, just a single index name. This should be sufficient for many cases. Whenever there is a choice to potentially use an index for this FOR loop, the optimizer will first check if the specified index can be used. If so, it will use it, regardless of whether it would normally use a different index. If it cannot use that index, then it will fall back to its normal logic to select another index.

If the optional forceIndexHint: true is specified, then it will not fall back, and instead generate an error.

OPTIONS {indexHint: 'byName'[, forceIndexHint: <boolean>]}

The second is an array of index names, in order of preference. When specified this way, the optimizer will behave much in the same way as above, but will check the feasibility of each of the specified indices, in the order they are given, falling back to its normal logic or failing only if none of the specified indices are feasible.

OPTIONS {indexHint: ['byName', 'byColor'][, forceIndexHint: <boolean>]}