# Is it possible to "inspect" all predicates of a node without having type definitions?

**URL:** <https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/is-it-possible-to-inspect-all-predicates-of-a-node-without-having-type-definitions/16390>\
**Category:** Dgraph\
**Tags:** kind:question, dgraph\
**Created:** [December 23, 2021, 5:11am UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/is-it-possible-to-inspect-all-predicates-of-a-node-without-having-type-definitions/16390 "2021-12-23T05:11:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![GusB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@GusB](https://discuss.dgraph.io/u/GusB)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2021, 5:11am UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/is-it-possible-to-inspect-all-predicates-of-a-node-without-having-type-definitions/16390/1 "2021-12-23T05:11:55Z")

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## What I want to do

I want to be able to explore a graph. Literally traverse each node and see all the predicates and edges that they have.

## What I did

The only solution that I found was to define types and use `expand(_all_)`. That works well as long as the predicates are in the type definitions. But I couldn’t find a way to get ALL the predicates of a node regardless of whether those are defined in a type or not.

## Dgraph metadata

I’m using the latest version v21.12

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**Author:** ![iluminae](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/discuss.dgraph.io/iluminae/32/7367_2.png) [@iluminae](https://discuss.dgraph.io/u/iluminae)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2021, 5:22am UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/is-it-possible-to-inspect-all-predicates-of-a-node-without-having-type-definitions/16390/2 "2021-12-23T05:22:58Z")

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No there is not - the storage is organized by predicate, not ‘node’ so the only way to see all the predicates of a node is to ask the system `go to all these predicates and get the value for uid 0x123`.

The type system and `expand(type)` is just shorthand for that format of question. Furthermore, `expand(_all_)` is just like `expand(MyType)` but looks up the type arguments for expand() from the value of dgraph.type at each node.

So as a workaround to setting types on every node, you can define a single type `AllMyPredicates` and use `expand(AllMyPredicates)` but it has the same performance implications as having every predicate there in your query.

If you use the GraphQL layer the strict typing will tell you exactly what is ‘on a node’ but behind the curtain it just knows which predicates to inspect.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![GusB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@GusB](https://discuss.dgraph.io/u/GusB)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2021, 9:20pm UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/is-it-possible-to-inspect-all-predicates-of-a-node-without-having-type-definitions/16390/3 "2021-12-23T21:20:47Z")

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Thanks so much for your response.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![miko](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/discuss.dgraph.io/miko/32/2493_2.png) [@miko](https://discuss.dgraph.io/u/miko)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2021, 3:22am UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/is-it-possible-to-inspect-all-predicates-of-a-node-without-having-type-definitions/16390/4 "2021-12-24T03:22:35Z")

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You can also export the database, and look for your object with grep:  
`zgrep "^<0xabcdef>" /path/to/g01.rdf.gz`  
where `0xabcdef` is UID of your node.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![iluminae](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/discuss.dgraph.io/iluminae/32/7367_2.png) [@iluminae](https://discuss.dgraph.io/u/iluminae)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2021, 4:06am UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/is-it-possible-to-inspect-all-predicates-of-a-node-without-having-type-definitions/16390/5 "2021-12-24T04:06:44Z")

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😬 yea… that would also work.

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**Author:** ![EnricoMi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/94ad74/32.png) [@EnricoMi](https://discuss.dgraph.io/u/EnricoMi)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2021, 10:29am UTC](https://discuss.dgraph.io/t/is-it-possible-to-inspect-all-predicates-of-a-node-without-having-type-definitions/16390/6 "2021-12-27T10:29:17Z")

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**No types and `expand(_all_)` needed!**

Given the schema of your Dgraph instance, that you can get from Dgraph:

```auto
schema {
  predicate
}

```

You can query for all nodes that contain any of the predicates (to be able to bootstrap and read those uids) and explicitly list all predicates to retrieve their values, if they exist.

Assume my schema contains `<name>` and `<director>`, my query would look like:

```auto
query {
  name as var(func: has(<name>))
  director as var(func: has(<director>))

  result (func: uid(name, director)) {
    <uid>
    <name>
    <director> { <uid> }
  }
}

```

For a lot of predicates in your schema or lots of nodes, of course, you would have to split this by predicates and paginate the result. This scales very well. I can elaborate on that if needed. This is how the [Spark Dgraph connector](https://github.com/G-Research/spark-dgraph-connector) partitions an arbitrary large graph and reads it in chunk by chunk. This works for any size of a graph, as long as a single predicate of a single uid fits into single Dgraph query response.