# Custom XIDs for creating edges

**URL:** <https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/custom-xids-for-creating-edges/9465>\
**Category:** Dgraph\
**Created:** [August 15, 2020, 7:40am UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/custom-xids-for-creating-edges/9465 "2020-08-15T07:40:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![zmateen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ed8c4c/32.png) [@zmateen](https://discuss.dgraph.io/u/zmateen)\
**Post date:** [August 15, 2020, 7:40am UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/custom-xids-for-creating-edges/9465/1 "2020-08-15T07:40:44Z")

</div>

I’m bulk-loading data into d-graph for an external source, as is. There’s a literal that uniquely identifies each node. Let’s call it “name”. Each node has a “name”. Some nodes (10% of the total) have a literal “targetName” that specifies “name” of another node to which do I need to create a “target” edge.  
This is how I do it right now:

1. Bulk load the data.
2. Query for all nodes and return their "name"s and uids.
3. Externally create a uid to “name” hash
4. Query for all nodes (with a has(targetName) filter)
5. Create the N-quad for each mutation, one at a time (using the hash, “name” and “targetName”)
6. Live-load the generated RDF

Currently Step 2 here is killing my efficiency by orders of magnitude, and it is pretty redundant and suboptimal to go about. Is there a native dgraph functionality that can help me achieve this?

Given that I’m maintaining the uniqueness of “name” externally anyway, if I can use it as an xid identifier for live load mutations, that’ll be tremendously helpful but I’m not sure if XIDs serve that purpose.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anand](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/discuss.dgraph.io/anand/32/5674_2.png) [@anand](https://discuss.dgraph.io/u/anand)\
**Post date:** [August 15, 2020, 2:08pm UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/custom-xids-for-creating-edges/9465/2 "2020-08-15T14:08:15Z")

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Welcome @zmateen,

I am not sure if you have considered the upsert capability which might help in eliminating step 2 altogether.

Considering the schema :

```auto
<friend>: [uid] .
<friendName>: string @index(exact) .
<name>: string @index(hash) .

```

Consider a `Person` type as below. The `name` attribute is setup for identification, and friend is a relation between `Person` objects.

 ![for1](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/uploads/dgraph/original/2X/6/6875c238c8416abd3539fc6dc6cdd7c697fbaa98.png)  
Given this, if you could create a mutation for each `x <friend> y` as below. It will try to match by name, and if not found, create either/both “x” and “y” node. “john” and “steve” can be replaced by the unique identifiers you are using.

```auto
upsert {
  # john friend steve
  query {
    findX(func: eq(name, "john")) {
      x as uid      
    }
    
   findY(func: eq(name, "steve")) {
      y as uid      
    }
  }
  mutation {
    set {
# set types      
      uid(x) <dgraph.type> "Person" .
      uid(y) <dgraph.type> "Person" .
# set relation friend      
      uid(x) <friend> uid(y) .
# set attributes      
      uid(x) <name> "john" .
      uid(y) <name> "steve" .
    }
  }
}

```

You could load data directly through curl commands as mentioned [here](https://dgraph.io/docs/mutations/mutations-using-curl/). You could also use the Ratel UI, it’s definitely more user friendly.