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Technical Tips & Tricks

Previously internal product knowledge now available for you to explore!

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Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

`Comparison method violates its general contract!` error when running a query.Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 6, 2020 This is a pretty weird error that's popped up a couple times. This usually appears when we've pivoted data and there's a conflict in the inputs which causes a Java issue (Stack Overflow).One option to resolve this issue is to reduce the number of columns in the Explore. This content is subject to limited support.

2811

1 day ago

Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Splitting Strings into Rows in the Absence of Table-Generating Functions

Looker will not be updating this content, nor guarantees that everything is up-to-date. IntroductionMost SQL dialects don't support robust table-generating functions. There are a few common use cases for table-generating functions, such as creating a sequence of numbers or dates, un-nesting a JSON object or array into rows, or splitting a string on a delimiter into rows.In this article, we'll show an example for the last use case: Taking a string containing n distinct comma-separated values and splitting it into n unique rows.SetupSuppose we have a table of products containing id, name, and tags: productsid name tags 123 Scrunch Cloth Pants Set Pants, Throwback, 80s 1287 Le Suit Citrus Breeze Skirt Suit Skirts, Dresses, Business Casual 486 MaxStudio Plaid Romper Jumpsuits, Casual, Rompers Our goal is to un-nest the tags to create a table to map products to tags. We will assume that a table of numbers already exists in the database, though this can be created using t

25801

2 days ago

adina.katzLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Filter a column on multiple values from another columnKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 7, 2019 Say you want to filter a column by multiple values in a "sub column", i.e you have a column order id's and a column product id's, and you want to filter for order id's that contain product id A AND product id B.The issue: You can't use a custom filter because that filter is a row based filter and won't account for multiple row values of product id for one value of order id.The bad solution: You can use a PDT to filter on product id A then filter on product id B in the explore (or in a derived table with the filter for A as a sub select)The better solution: A group concatenation aggregate function! How this works: The aggregate function works like any other function and will concat values based on the grouping. Implementation: We can either useApproach 1: Create measure type listmeasure: product_id_list { type: list list_field: product_id;;} Approach 2: Create measure of type string and use appropriate sql dialect for group_concatmeasure: group_concat_product_

11262

3 days ago

Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

SQL Pattern: How can I count the number of comma separated values in a string?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 16, 2017 This might not be a common request, but the method to do so is below:SELECT (LENGTH(Col2) - LENGTH(REPLACE(Col2,",","")) + 1) AS MyCol2CountFROM MyTable Basically, you replace all occurrences of , with an empty string "", then subtract its LENGTH from the LENGTH of the unadulterated string, which gives you the number of , characters. This doesn't tell you the number of comma separates values, however. If you have four comma separated values, there will be three commas. In order to get the number of comma separated values, simply add 1.An example in Impala syntax is below:Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19915746/count-the-number-of-elements-in-a-comma-separated-string-in-oracle This content is subject to limited support.

117841

5 days ago

Eric_LyonsLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Use Table Calculations to Get Most Recent Line Item When User Has Duplicate Rows (Non-subquery version)Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 19, 2020 If you have line items in a table with duplicate ids, but only wants the most recent items or highest items many times you will try to use a SQL subquery to SELECT MAX(DATE) for the given parameter, but you can create this with table calculations in an explore.First, sort the explore by the ID. Then, apply a secondary sort to the date column (descending).Then, we can create a table calculation that checks if the value below the id is a duplicate.Then, we check the date column for duplicates. This content is subject to limited support.

1871

11 days ago

jamesnestlerLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to: Multiple user attribute values (OR logic)Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 20, 2019 Use a String Filter (advanced) user attribute type and input the user attribute values with the following syntax:'value1','value2' Each value should be wrapped with single quotes and delimited with a comma. Make sure there are no white spaces between the values. This content is subject to limited support.

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12 days ago

Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How are files sent to SFTP and S3 buckets named?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 31, 2019 All file names look like scheduleName_timestamp_hash, where hash is a random 6-character identifier and the timestamp follows the pattern YYYY-MM-DDTHHMM (e.g. 2019-05-31T0933).There is a feature request ticket to be able to customize the file name of files sent via schedules: Change file name for data sent in schedules This content is subject to limited support.

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13 days ago

MichaelMember

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Important: Supportability of Knowledge Drops

We will not be updating Knowledge Drop content, nor do we guarantee that everything is up-to-date. The timestamp published on each Knowledge Drop denotes when it was last verified. We have spent years building up this treasure trove of insightful Looker tips, tricks, and how-to’s, but given how quickly Looker has evolved, we never expected this content to stay bleeding-edge forever. Think of these Drops as point-in-time insights that were once important enough for us to document. That said, there’s a TON of extremely valuable and useful pieces of Looker knowledge here! We hope it inspires you to explore, learn, and engage with your fellow community members! If you have questions on these articles, please reply on the post for Community help! Plus, if you’re looking for officially supported resources, you can always visit our Help Center and review our Docs.

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13 days ago

Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Using Liquid Split and Array Filters to Format Lists

Looker will not be updating this content, nor guarantees that everything is up-to-date. This post covers advanced subject matter and assumes good, pre-existing knowledge of Liquid and LookML. The Problem In data, objects often have lists of attributes associated with them. For example, a user's profile can contain multiple cities, states, or countries, depending on how often they have changed addresses. A common challenge is organizing and presenting lists of attributes in a user-friendly and digestible way. This article addresses how to render lists into easily readable formats and how to make them more interactive. To achieve this, we will use Liquid, a templating language developed by Shopify, in conjunction with the html and link LookML parameters. The Solution In our e-commerce data set, we have a field called "City List Raw." This is a type: string field that outputs a list of every city where users live now or have lived in the past. In our Explore below, we have the user citi

24963

21 days ago

jon.allenLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to build a dynamic link parameter for different dashboard ID between dev and production environmentsKnowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jun 25, 2020 ProblemUsing relative links (/dashboards/410) vs. absolute links (https://abcdefg.looker.com/dashboards/410) will correct for differences in the base domain, but will not accommodate for differences in dashboard ID between dev and production instances.SolutionIf a dashboard was moved from one instance to another using Gazer, the dashboard ID may be different, but the dashboard slug will remain the same. So we can use the slug in place of the id directly in the link.For example you can do gzr dashboard cat 410 --host myinstance.looker.com and get:{"content_metadata_id": 2997,"description": "This is Katie's cool dashboard","hidden": false,"id": 410,"query_timezone": null,"readonly": false,"refresh_interval": null,"refresh_interval_to_i": null,..."favorite_count": 0,"last_accessed_at": "2019-06-28 15:23:00 +0000","load_configuration": "cache_run","lookml_link_id": "girls_at_looker::WB_TEST","show_filters_bar": true,"show_title": true,"slug": "KoDXRuaeLDQCuQ0rt4iH

4072

22 days ago

Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I change the visualization of my drill fields? What criteria does Looker use to set which a visualization will be used in a drill set?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 6, 2019 It's not possible to choose a visual drilling type via the UI, but there are implicit rules that say what the visualization will be. There is a feature request requesting ability to change them at will.WorkaroundYou can use the method in this Help Center article to hard code the viz type for drilling on a field: https://help.looker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360023589613--More-Powerful-Data-DrillingThe Rulesif a dimension is the primary key OR (the first column is a dimension AND it’s name is id) OR (the first dimension’s name is _id) if there is only 1 record then “single_record” viz otherwise we’ll choose a “table” if the first dimension contains “albersUsa” data and there’s only 1 measure column then the type should be “looker_geo_choropleth” if any of the dimension contains location data then go for “looker_map” if any of the dimension contains map layer data and any measures/dimensions are numeric then go for “looker_map” if there’s no dimensions or measures

5901

1 month ago

samLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why are my PDTs building on multiple connections?

Last tested: June 2021 A PDT will build on every model that it is included in. So, if you have several models with include "*.view", then each of those models will include all PDTs that you've defined.A good solution is to adopt a naming convention for your PDT views. For example, you could make sure your BigQuery PDTs all begin with bq so that you can write:include "bq*.view" in your model that includes a BigQuery connection.Then, once you have your PDTs being included that way, you can adopt a similar naming convention for files you want to include in everything (like everywhere_* ) or include them individually.Here are some other common reasons PDTs would build for multiple models: - The PDT is included in multiple models that have different connections.- The PDT uses a datagroup that is defined differently in different models.- The PDT is included in multiple models with different case sensitivity settings- Differences in a dependency PDT between one model and another. This cont

1111

1 month ago

thomas.banghartLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Will a PDT build for each model that includes it?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 8, 2020 In most cases if one PDT view is included in multiple models which all share the same connection, the PDT is built once and is shared by multiple models.There are some cases where a PDT will be built for each model even when those models share a connection. Some reasons that warrant multiple builds:The PDT is included in multiple models that have different connections. The PDT uses a datagroup that is defined differently in different models. The PDT is included in multiple models- with different case sensitivity settings Differences in a dependency PDT between one model and another. Note: Admin > PDT will list out all the models that the PDT is shared between (the models have the same datagroup definition and the same connection). However, as mentioned above, the PDT is built only once for one model and the rest of the models will just use that build. That is why, in the system activity PDT_builds explore, you'll see that the PDT belongs to only one of the

761

1 month ago

Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does access to system_activity make a "viewer" user into a "standard" user?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 9, 2019 ContextIn most contracts, a "viewer" user is one who can't explore.However, in order to be able to see dashboards and Looks built off of the System Activity model, these users must be given the see_system_activity permission. Once they have this permission, they now have the "explore" tab and the ability to explore the System Activity models.Does this mean that the "viewer" is no longer a viewer, and should instead be billed as a "standard" user?AnswerEven though the 'explore' tab shows up, the user is still considered a viewer and not a standard user. This content is subject to limited support.

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1 month ago

samLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

If the cache is full, then what gets dropped first?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 2021 Looker's default max cache size is 2GB. This can be changed with the --on-disk-cache-size=<i> startup option, where <i> is a number of megabytes (so, default 2000).If your Looker instance detects that the on-disk cache exceeds the max, then it starts purging old cache entries until the limit is no longer exceeded. The algorithm to determine which entries to purge considers the age of a cache entry as well as the last time that cache entry was accessed. This content is subject to limited support.

2171

1 month ago

nouradLooker Staff

posted in Technical Tips & Tricks

I'm trying to deploy the code using Webhooks, but I receive a 404 error.

Hi! I’m Noura TSE at Google. Have you ever get this page after trying to deploy lookML code to production? 404 Not FoundYou’ll get this error if you try to deploy via a webhook for the first time. The trick here is to deploy code manually via the Looker UI first. If you are stuck with this error follow this. How to:Go to Deployment Manager tab and select a commit to deployClick on “Select Commit”You can choose to deploy the commit with or without tag. A manual deployment will look like this Once you complete this, you will be able to deploy via the webhooksYou can try to deploy via the browser of via command line on a terminalhttps://[Url instance name]/webhooks/projects/[project_name]/deployorcurl -i -H "X-Looker-Deploy-Secret:<Secret>" https://[url instance name]/webhooks/projects/[project_name]/deploy Cheers! Hope this is helpful! Noura

1 month ago

Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Anchor Tag on New Dashboards - HTMLKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 23, 2020 On new Dashboards (non-legacy), we can anchor dashboards with the name and href html attributes!We can accomplish this in the body of text tiles. In one text tile, we can define the link to the anchor, that we click on to be taken somewhere on the dashboard by adding:<a href="#AnchorMe">Here</a> Then, we can create a text tile anywhere on the dashboard that will accept this anchored href. In that tile, we can put something like this:<a name="AnchorMe"></a> This results in a clickable link on "Here" in that first text tile, that takes us to this specific 2nd text tile with the name attribute defined. The key part of getting this to work is making sure the name attribute value, and the href #attribute value are the exact same! This content is subject to limited support.

5851

1 month ago

Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Embedding Looker Content in Salesforce

Looker will not be updating this content, nor guarantees that everything is up-to-date. In order to embed content in Salesforce, you will need to have Visualforce development permissions and the ability to edit pages and objects in SFDC.This post covers an advanced topic that assumes a familiarity with embedding Looker content. Embedding dashboards and Looks in the applications and platforms where your users spend their time is one of the most powerful ways to leverage Looker. This Help Center article expands upon the concepts addressed in How to Quickly Embed Looker in the Tools and Apps You Use, to provide guidance on embedding content within Salesforce. Adding a New Visualforce Page The examples below use the private embed method, which requires each user to be signed into Looker to be able to view content. Alternatively, you can make content available to all users regardless of Looker access by using the public embed method for Looks.The first step to embedding content in Salesfor

18504

1 month ago

Department of Customer LoveModerator

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Custom Filters: 1 complete month agoKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 2, 2021 ${events.created_date} >= add_months(-1,trunc_months(now()))AND ${events.created_date} < add_months(1,add_months(-1,trunc_months(now()))) This content is subject to limited support.

1991

1 month ago

Peggy_BeardMember

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do you use refinements to change a view in only one explore in a model?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 19, 2021 Use the ordering of refinements, as mentioned in this articleLogical example: Model file includes view file for view: aand hasexplore: bjoin: aview: +adimension: newfieldexplore cjoin: aOnly explore c should include the newfield dimension. This content is subject to limited support.

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1 month ago

MorganLooker Staff

published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can you change the background color of a dashboard?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 19, 2020 Only for Embed dashboards.For Dashboards-Next, it is one of the settings under Dashboard Page in Custom Themes (note that this is a license feature, so it will need to be enabled on an instance).For regular dashboards, there is an "embed settings" option that lets you edit certain options for an embedded dashboard. There are LookML dashboard parameters too. The options look like this:You can't do this for dashboards in the Looker UI. This content is subject to limited support.

23701

1 month ago

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