Passing parameters when creating url to the explore from dimension

Hi!

Thank you for answer! I can describe the situation in more details.

I have a dashboard with several looks that are displayed as the bar chart diagrams. I have several parameters on the dashboard - start date, end date, country, and venue name. All these parameters are connected to the looks. Start date and end date are parameters that mean the period of time for which data will be chosen. Country and venue name are parameters that addresses to the fields in the database. So actually start date and end date are parameters that were written in a view as

parameter: start_date {type: date }

parameter: end_date {type: date }

And other 2 parameters (country and venue name) are just filters that were written as dimensions in the view.

We need double drill down for every diagram on this dashboard. First drill down is displayed when we click on the diagram and 11 columns should appear in that drilldown. And the second drill down should be when we click on the venue name in this first drill down. I hope I described this step clear…

The issue is that we cannot create such a double drilldown because in the second drill down the same columns are displayed as in the first drilldown but we need those columns and 5 more for the second drill down(!). So it can be said that we need a little bit different set of columns.

That is why I found out that the best solution for this case is to use drill down and then to go to the explore from this first drilldown using a link. So this link is displayed for every row for the first drill down.

And when I click on this link I go to the separate explore with all columns that I need. Also I pass those 4 parameters that I told about - 2 parameters start_date/end_date and 2 filters - country and venue name. Unfortunately it is not enough to use only filters because the data is filtered using those 2 parameters start-date and end_date.

And that is ok with filters - country and venue name can be passed easily to the explore from the dashboard using this code:

&f[view_name.country]={{ country._value }}

&f[view_name.venue_name]={{ value }}

(I didn’t wrote venue_name._value because all this code is written for venue_name dimension because we click on venue_name in the table for first drill down).

Unfortunately I cannot send good screenshots because there are private data… But hope I described it well. Also I send full URL with some data replacement.

dimension: venue_name {

link: {

label: “Drilldown”

url: “looker_instance/explore/model_name/explore_name?fields=

view_name.id,

view_name.dimension1,

view_name.dimension2,

view_name.country,

view_name.dimension4,

view_name.venue_name,

view_name.calculation1,

view_name.calculation2,

view_name.calculation3,

view_name.calculation4,

view_name.calculation5,

view_name.calculation6,

view_name.calculation7,

view_name.calculation8,

view_name.dimension5,

view_name.dimension6,

view_name.dimension7

&f[view_name.p_start_date]={{ p_start_date._parameter_value }}

&f[view_name.p_end_date]={{ p_end_date._parameter_value }}

&f[view_name.network]={{ network._value }}

&f[view_name.venue_name]={{ value }}”

icon_url: “http://www.looker.com/favicon.ico”

}

type: string

sql: ${TABLE}.“VENUE_NAME” ;;

}

And everything is working fine except this thing with start_date and end_date parameters. All fields are displayed, I can go to the needed explore, all other filters can be passed from the dashboard…

When the new explore with this drilldown appears I can see start_date and end_date parameters and filters country and venue name. So parameters start date and end date are passed but they always have only TODAY value by default but not the value that I pass from the dashboard.

I thought that maybe that is because these parameters has date datatype but seems that issue is in something other.

Thank you very much in advance!

Got it, thank you for the detailed explanation! I think this is happening for the same reason as what’s being discussed here:

The parameter_value of that parameter is actually the SQL string TIMESTAMP('2019-02-04 00:00:00') (to pick a random date), and when that’s fed into the filter portion of the URL, it thinks “woah, I don’t know what that means” and just defaults to showing today.

This is an interesting puzzle. What if you change it to use this syntax:

&f[view_name.p_start_date]={{ _filters['p_start_date']}}? I have a strange feeling that that will work— Since it’s capturing the actual filter configuration of the field there, rather than dumping the raw “parameter value” which doesn’t seem to be working.