Nested Maps and Collections in Neo4j 2

Question

I understand that node and relationship properties are limited to primitive types or arrays of primitive types. In the "Cards" section of the Neo4j 2.1 help card

{name: 'Alice', age: 38, address: {city: 'London', residential: true}}

Literal maps are declared in braces, like property maps. Nested maps and collections are supported.

Of course, something like:

CREATE (alice {name:'Alice', age:38, address:{city:'London', residential:true}}) 

throws an exception:

 Error: Property values can only be of primitive types or arrays thereof Neo.ClientError.Statement.InvalidType 

In what context does Neo4j support nested maps and collections?

Answer 1

(Edited)

The reference card is a little too thin. The most important word is literal. In other words, you can use arbitrarily nested maps and arrays in literals, but you cannot store such things in a node or relation.

For example, this works:

 WITH {name:'Alice', age:38, address:[{city:'London', residential:true}, {city: 'Paris', residential: false} ]} AS x RETURN x; 

But this fails:

 CREATE (x {name:'Alice', age:38, address:[{city:'London', residential:true}, {city: 'Paris', residential: false} ]}) RETURN x; 

Answer 2

There is a way to do this by converting nested maps to a json string. Answered here