Unix Socket support

[drcrallen]

Parsing a Neo4J URL goes through a number of specifically coded schemes

While servers recently received the capability to bind to unix sockets, the python client doesn't recognize the bolt+unix scheme.

Attempting to connect throws an error:

neo4j.exceptions.ConfigurationError: URI scheme 'bolt+unix' is not supported. Supported URI schemes are ['bolt', 'bolt+ssc', 'bolt+s', 'neo4j', 'neo4j+ssc', 'neo4j+s']. Examples: bolt://host[:port] or neo4j://host[:port][?routing_context]

Feature Request

Add proper bolt+unix scheme support to the Python library.

Pitch

Unix sockets were labeled as production ready in the 2025.09.0 release.

[robsdedude]

Can you please describe your use-case? The Unix socket on the server was implemented as a side-channel for DBMS access when troubleshooting DBMS issues. For such use-cases we intended users to rely on connecting to the server that needs administration through Cypher shell (based on the Java driver, which has Unix socket support) running on the same machine.

[drcrallen]

Scale

Currently in investigative stage.

Use Case

Using unix sockets instead of network connections between a python backend as well as python batch processing.

WHY?

Using Neo4J in a machine-local database without requiring network connectivity, and without accidentally exposing network connectivity.

[drcrallen]

@robsdedude sounds like fully supporting the Unix Socket feature like how a Redis or a Postgres supports sockets is not on the roadmap currently. I'm going to guess that most users are fine with k8s network security and the priority for the Neo4J team to support Unix Sockets at that level is relatively low. I just want to make sure it is "in the record" so to speak, and not just a bug.