I agree, GraphML is the way to go, if you don t have problems with the verbosity of XML. A simple way to do it is to open the Neo4j graph from Gremlin, where GraphML is the default import/export format, something like

peters: ./gremlin.sh

gremlin> $_g := neo4j:open( /tmp/neo4j )
==>neograph[/tmp/neo4j, vertices:2, edges:1]
gremlin> g:save( graphml-export.xml )

As described here

Does that solve your problem?

With Blueprints, simply do:

Graph graph = new Neo4jGraph("/tmp/mygraph");
GraphMLWriter.outputGraph(graph, new FileOutputStream("mygraph.xml"));

Or, with Gremlin (which does the same thing in the back):

g = new Neo4jGraph( /tmp/mygraph );
g.saveGraphML( mygraph.xml );

Finally, to the constructor for Neo4jGraph, you can also pass in a GraphDatabaseService instance.

I don t believe anything exists out there for this, not as of few months ago when messing with it. From what I saw, there are 2 main roadblocks:

1. XML is hierarchical, you can t represent graph data readily in this format.
2. Lack of explicit IDs for nodes. Even though implicit IDs exist it d be like using ROWID in oracle for import/export...not guaranteed to be the same.

Some people have suggested that GraphML would be the proper format for this, I m inclined to agree. If you don t have graphical structures and you would be fine represented in an XML/hierarchical format...well then that s just bad luck. Since the majority of users who would tackle this sort of enhancement task are using data that wouldn t store that way, I don t see an XML solution coming out...more likely to see a format supporting all uses first.

Take a look at NoSqlUnit It has tools for converting GraphML to neo4j and back again.

In particular, there is com.lordofthejars.nosqlunit.graph.parser.GraphMLWriter and com.lordofthejars.nosqlunit.graph.parser.GraphMLReader which read / write XML files to / from a neo4j database.