Hiding fields from a view in different explores

[kuopaz]

Hi

I was merrily using fields:

or fields: [] in the joined view of an explore, when I wanted a restricted set of fields in this particular explore.

But, this stops the drill through on measures from working properly. Is there a way around this?

Other explores join the view without using fields: and the drill through works, with the dimensions displayed even when they have hidden: yes and hence do not appear in the user’s explore.

Thanks

[kuopaz]

This is a pretty big limitation.

[izzymiller]

Just clarifying: It sounds like you’d like to “hide” fields from 1 view in some explores without truly excluding them from the explore, so that they can still be referenced by drills etc. Is that accurate?

To me, that shouts extends. It means you’d wind up with more copies of view files (but they’d really just be extensions, so you wouldn’t need to keep up full maintenance of more than one copy). Check out that docs link and see if it makes sense for your case.

Looker Documentation

Reusing Code with Extends

Create and merge reusable chunks of LookML with the 'extends' parameter.

Use of the fields parameter entirely excludes fields from the explore, as you’ve noticed, and I don’t really see us changing that in the near term. Speaking entirely in a non-engineering capacity, many common user errors are related to exclusion/inclusion of fields from explores. Any changes to the way that works would require lots of backtesting and change management, and would probably lead to a fair amount of confusion.

[kuopaz]

Thanks Izzy.

Yes, that is my scenario, and I think extending the views is the solution. But as you say could lead to maintenance problems.

Although it seems right that the same fields should be available to the user from a given view in all explores that use it, this can lead to a poor user experience with too many fields than wanted in some explores. On the other hand, the fields in a drill though on a given measure should, ideally, always be the same - because the user does not select them!

[izzymiller]

Yes, you’re right on both counts from a UX perspective. We are working on some cool improvements to the way you extend LookML objects that will make it a bit less tricky to maintain. Thanks for circling back!

[jnsnmnhn]

Any chance those cool improvements have been rolled out in the past few years?