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An open-source Python framework for graph databases.

Bulbs is an open-source Python persistence framework for graph databases, and it is the first piece of a larger Web-development toolkit that will be released in the upcoming weeks.

1. Get Bulbs

Bulbs is a Python library. You can install it system wide using the setuptools easy_install utility:

$ sudo easy_install bulbs

Or you can install it in your project’s virtual environment by using pip:

$ mkdir whybase
$ cd whybase
$ virtualenv env
$ source env/bin/activate
(env)$ pip install bulbs

The Bulbs source code is on Github at https://github.com/espeed/bulbs. Feedback welcome.

See the Bulbs installation docs for more details.

2. Get Neo4j Server or Rexster

Bulbs supports pluggable backends, including support for Neo4j Server and Rexster.

Both servers provide a RESTful Web service for graph databases.

Neo4j Server is Neo4j’s native server.

Rexster supports any Blueprints-enabled graph database, including Neo4j, OrientDB, Dex, OpenRDF, and InfiniteGraph.

Get Neo4j Server

To get Neo4j Server, download the latest edition from http://neo4j.org/download/, then do:

$ tar -xvzf neo4j-<version>-unix.tar.gz
$ cd neo4j-<version>
$ bin/neo4j start

This will install Neo4j Server and start it using the default configuration.

See the Neo4j docs for more details.

Get Rexster

To get Rexster, make sure you have Git and Mavern installed, then do:

$ git clone https://github.com/tinkerpop/rexster.git
$ cd rexster
$ mvn clean install

This will install Rexster and automatically download embedded versions of the graph databases it supports.

See the Rexster docs for more details.

3. Get Gremlin

Gremlin is a domain-specific language for graph databases (like SQL for graphs), and it’s what you use to write queries in Bulbs.

Rexster and Neo4j Server will automatically install and use an embedded version of Gremlin, but it’s nice to have the Gremlin shell installed to experiment with queries.

To install the Gremlin shell, make sure you have Git and Maven installed, then do:

$ git clone https://github.com/tinkerpop/gremlin.git
$ cd gremlin
$ mvn clean install

See the Gremlin docs for more details.

What’s Next?

After you download and install Bulbs, Gremlin, and Neo4j or Rexster, read the Bulbs docs for information on how to build something with it.