Only Show Value in First Row

Hi all. Finding my way around Looker after many years with Tableau and R. Thanks for reading.

This is a very boring question, but the client wants certain values to show in only the first row of the view. What I mean is this: Say we have a very simple table.

create table foobar (idx int, val varchar(5));
insert into foobar (idx, val) values (1, 'hello'), (2, 'hello'), (3, 'world'), (4, 'world');

If the user viewed this table in Looker and sorted ascending by idx, it would look like

1 - hello
2 - (null)
3 - (null)
4 - (null)

But if they sorted it descending it would look like

4 - world
3 - (null)
2 - (null)
1 - (null)

I tried a table calculation something like this:

if(row() = 1, ${explore_name.val}, null)

But I get an error:

Field "explore_name.val" is not in the current query

Is there a way around what I’m running into here? Maybe I’m just going about it wrong?

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2 REPLIES 2

Dawid
Participant V

Hi Benjamin,

Welcome to the Looker Community!

explore_name.val has to be added to the results table/query… Then select Hide from visualisation to actually not show it.

The reason for it is because Table Calculations work on the data layer returned from the query, not in the query itself.

So, add the field, hide it, and then Table Calculation show work fine

Thank you so much! I really appreciate your answer. It both showed me what to do and helped me understand why. And it was just in time for me to start up with fresh eyes in the morning!

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