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The Kitchen Table

Explore the product knowledge we've built up together

2113 Topics

sidney.junior
Looker Staff
sidney.juniorLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Does the embedded domain allowlist admin panel option support wildcards?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 30, 2021 Short answer: Looker may allow wildcards in the embed domain list, but browsers generally do not allow wildcards in domain names for browser security contexts.Longer answer: The Looker allowlist will allow wildcards, the browser will not. However, in the context of any given page, you just have to ensure that the parent page passes the correct of the two origins that you are using for that specific page load (via the embed_domain parameter), then Looker will use that and it should workFor Example:In the admin UI we would put https://*.domain.comIn the embed URL we would put the actual page we are embedding on embeddedcontent.domain.com This content is subject to limited support.                 

1341
M
9 months ago
ryan.dunlavy
Looker Staff
ryan.dunlavyLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Week-related table calculation functionsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 2, 2019 Currently, there are no week-related table calculation functions available. Below are feature requests and workarounds for various week-related functions.extract_day_of_week / extract_day_of_week_indexA function to extract the day of the week or day of week index from a date field doesn't currently exist - request it here.Workarounds:day_of_week_indexmod(diff_days(date(2008,01,01), ${orders.created_date}) + 1, 7)day_of_weekindex( list("Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"), mod(diff_days(date(2008,01,01), ${orders.created_date}) + 1, 7))trunc_weeksA function to get the week from a date field doesn't currently existWorkaround:add_days(-1 * mod(diff_days(date(2008,01,01), ${orders.created_date}) + 1, 7), ${orders.created_date})Weekday / business day count No function currently available natively, request it here.Workaround:diff_days(${start_date}, ${end_date}) + 3 - floor(diff_days(add_days(-1 * (mod(diff_days(date(2008,01,0

22911
Pieter_DeVries
Looker Staff
1 year ago
ryan.dunlavy
Looker Staff
ryan.dunlavyLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can you change the file name of a scheduled report?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 31, 2019 No. Please comment on the feature request: https://feedback.us.pendo.io/app/#/case/17616See this page for how files sent to SFTP and S3 are named: How are files sent to SFTP and S3 buckets named?  This content is subject to limited support.                   

4171
jamesnestler
Looker Staff
1 year ago
ryan.dunlavy
Looker Staff
ryan.dunlavyLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How does the renderer work?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 11, 2020 When a render job starts to generate a PNG or PDF of a look, explore or dashboard, it goes through the following steps:The render job enters the caching queue, waiting until a caching spot is open. By default, there are 2 render threads but this can be changed with a startup flag (change with caution) Once a spot opens up, the render job enters the cacher. This is where Looker runs all queries in a dashboard, or the single query for an explore or look, and caches the results. This step ensures that once Chromium starts up, it doesn't have to wait around for the SQL to finish. Once the queries are cached, the job enters the render queue where it waits for a render thread. Once a spot opens up, the render job starts. The renderer then starts a Chromium process, and Looker connects to the Chromium process via its developer tools. Chromium then loads the content from Looker from the cache it set in step 2 (as long as the cache has not expired), waits to receive a

6171
Ismail_A
8 months ago
rufus
Looker Staff
rufusLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How can I reverse a running total so that it goes from bottom up?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 Running Total Down:sum(offset_list(${measure},1-row(), row()))Running Total Up:sum(offset_list(${measure},0,count(${dimension})-row()+1)) This content is subject to limited support.                 

7051
L
9 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How do Filter Suggestions Work?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 21, 2020 Filter suggestions are a way to save time when typing into filters and ensure you're choosing an option that exists in the data. When you click into a filter box, a list of suggestions will appear below the field. Where does this list of suggestions come from?Looker will run a query against the database to get all possible options for that field. It will look something like this:SELECT DISTINCT <field_name>FROM <table>WHERE (<field_name> LIKE '%' OR <field_name> LIKE '% %')GROUP BY 1ORDER BY 1LIMIT 1000 If the user types some characters into the filter box, Looker will substitute the appropriate conditions into the WHERE clause to filter the results. Looker will then show the first 100 of those results. Can I change what suggestions are populated?Yes! Check out this docs article. Are suggestions cached?Yes, they are! The cache length for filter suggestions is determined by the suggest_persist_for LookML parameter, which has a default va

10181
R
3 months ago
romain.ducarrouge
Looker Staff
romain.ducarrougeLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Download Looker Jar ErrorsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 19, 2020 Invalid RequestThis is a catch-all error message for a number of different issues on the download page. Here are some of the main reasons this error can come up:You are using the wrong license key You are using the license key for a Looker-hosted instance (only self-hosted licenses can download jar files) You are using the wrong version name when selecting Specific Version (a valid example is looker-7.4-latest.jar) You are trying to download a jar for an unsupported release (more info on supported releases here)You can find more information on the looker jar file download page here.ERROR 400: Bad RequestOne reason for this issue is the formatting for the wget command when using the API method for downloading the jar files. Following the example from the doc: wget -O- --header=Content-Type:application/json </code>--post-data='{"lic": "YOURLOOKERLICENSE", "email": "contact@email.com", "latest":"specific", </code>"specific":"looker-5.24-latest.jar"}'

891
mconigliaro-cirrusmd
3 months ago
rachel.johnson
Looker Staff
rachel.johnsonLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

MYSQL—HowTo: Why does MySQL need database permissions for derived tables?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Mar 9, 2021 At the time the code for the MySQL dialect was written, it did not support WITH, so we had to write derived tables a bit differently. Instead of WITH we use CREATE temp TABLE, which requires database permissions. (This is still different than a PDT since we are not writing the table to the schema, just creating a temp table)This error can occur when trying to use derived tables without setting up the database permissions:temp derived_table sql_availability_audit creation failed: SQL Error in CREATE TABLE as SELECT: java.sql.SQLSyntaxErrorException: Access denied for user 'looker'@'%' to database 'looker_tmp' Later versions of MySQL now support CTEs (WITH), but as of Mar. 2021 Looker still uses temporary tables for ephemeral derived tables. This content is subject to limited support.                   

2461
sunnygudVZ
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I access, develop or extend the System Activity model?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: May 12, 2020 No, at this time users cannot access, develop or extend the system activity model.There is a feature request open for comment for this functionality. This content is subject to limited support.                 

641
IanT
1 year ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Is it possible to connect to the API without an SSL connection?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 16, 2020 Nope - connecting to the API requires an https connection with a valid cert. This content is subject to limited support.                  

401
mzur
4 months ago
molly.lippsett
Looker Staff
molly.lippsettLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

refs/heads/branch REJECTED_OTHER_REASON: pre-receive hook declinedKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 2, 2020 Some users enforce strict policies on their commits from their remote git provider. These sometimes come in the form of pre-commit or pre-receive hooks. These are essentially scripts that git executes before or after an event, like a commit, or a push, that check things such as the length of the commit, the domain the commit is coming from, specified naming conventions needed, and so on. What happens?if a commit or push made through Looker doesn't pass the hook's rules, you'll see an error like this: What does this mean?This commit or deploy is essentially stuck in limbo - Looker thought it was ok, but the remote repository disagreed and sent it back. If we can figure out what is specified in the hook's rules, we might just be able to make a small change, revalidate LookML and make new commit with a message that fits the bill. But if a specific domain is required to deploy code to production changes are required on the side of the remote Git provider - the 'loo

12361
kevin.dunn
Looker Staff
1 year ago
paola
Looker Staff
paolaLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can an embed user move/copy a dashboard?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 14, 2020 An embed user cannot "move" or "copy" a dashboard into another space/folder, since those functions are only available on the folder page in the UI and are not available in the "four squares" embed folder dropdown menu.Therefore, the Manage Access / Edit permission on a folder will give embed users the ability to *save* content to their folders (i.e. from a query created on the explore page), but not to move/copy.​ This content is subject to limited support.                   

1491
K
8 months ago
paola
Looker Staff
paolaLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How can I check datagroup trigger values?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 15, 2020 The Admin > Datagroups page displays the current datagroup value.If your Looker instance is self-hosted and you would like to check previous values, you can do so in the logs by running:grep 'UPDATE' looker.log | grep 'datagroupname' | grep 'trigger_value' Replace datagroupname with the name of the datagroup you're looking for.You can also see the trigger value in System Activity > PDT Event Log, but it only has data up to the pruning schedule, so only the past few days of data will be shown. This content is subject to limited support.                   

1021
F
1 month ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How does "Clear Cache and Refresh" work, what if I close the browser?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 21, 2019 Looker only replaces the existing cache key when the query is complete; it does *not* begin processing a “Clear Cache and Refresh” request by actually clearing the cache, just passes a flag to not use what’s already in the cache. When the query completes, the result is placed in the cache, but if the query is killed or fails (like if you close the browser), the old cache entry remains in the cache.  This content is subject to limited support.                  

8601
KAEYV
8 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

REPLACE Characters in string filtersKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 30, 2019 If you see odd results in a drill's filter string, it may be that the strings content has a character that Looker is trying to escape.  Characters like  -  Looker is trying to escape, so we need to do something to avoid that.To avoid this, you'll want to replace the character(s) that Looker is trying to escape using something like the REPLACE function. This way both the field and the filter results will have the proper character string for filtering. dimension: namesql: REPLACE(${TABLE}.name_field, "-", " ")  This content is subject to limited support.                 

17841
usheikh
2 months ago
maxcorbin
Looker Staff
maxcorbinLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Is it possible to restrict Looker users to only be able to log in when they are connected to a certain network?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 13, 2020 If you are Looker-hosted, you can use the IP allowlist feature to restrict which IP addresses can access the Looker application.If you are self-hosted, you can configure your own network to allow which IP addresses have access. This content is subject to limited support.                 

881
IanT
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What's in a Marketplace Visualization?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 22, 2020 For instances >= 6.24, Viz will be served from the project. This project will contain:minified dist file (.js) source (.js, .jsx, .ts) configuration files (package.json, yarn.lock, .babelrc, webpack.config.js) LICENSE README manifest.lkml marketplace.jsonYou can find these repos by searching for the pattern viz-full_name-marketplace (ex: viz-multiple_value-marketplace or viz-spider-marketplace ) in the looker Github org.The manifest file contains the LookML visualization object which adds the viz to the instance:project_name: "viz-packed_bubble-marketplace" constant: VIS_LABEL {value: "Packed Bubble"export: override_optional} constant: VIS_ID {value: "packed_bubble-marketplace"export: override_optional} visualization: {id: "@{VIS_ID}"file: "packed_bubble.js"label: "@{VIS_LABEL}"} A project name is defined. Override-optional constants are defined. The user will have an opportunity to overwrite these in the installer prompt. The visualization object points to

971
M
5 months ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Dev Mode PDTsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 9, 2019 A PDT that has been created/modified in a user's dev mode has the following properties:It behaves as if it has persist_for: 24 hours regardless of what persistence is set. Each one will be its own table in the scratch schema (see "Why are there multiple copies of the same PDT in my database?"). Dev mode PDTs will NOT show in the Admin > PDT panel. (see below comment!) If you rebuild derived tables and run from your dev mode and the production SQL is exactly the same, then the prod version will be replaced. There is --if dev and --if prod syntax that allows you to modify the SQL in dev mode vs. production Dev mode PDTs with a sql_trigger_value will have an epoch timestamp on them in the hash (prod PDTs with a sql_trigger_value will not). Dev mode PDT builds will show up in the i__looker pdt_log explore with an Action Data of expires at: [timestamp] where [timestamp] is 24 hours after the build completes (as it would show for a PDT with persist_for: 24 hours).

4041
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
1 year ago
jamesnestler
Looker Staff
jamesnestlerLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How Looker does timezones and how to troubleshoot themKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 1, 2021 Timezones, yikes!You may need to troubleshoot timezones to answer questions like:Why isn't Looker converting timezones correctly? Why is the timezone CONVERT SQL wrong? Inaccurate? Is there a timezone conversion bug? My finance team says timezone conversions are incorrect because order X is missing from our Explore. Why is Looker not doing this correctly?The goal is this article is to help you understand how Looker does timezones and how that interacts with your database.How Looker does timezonesConnections Panel, Database Timezone: This is the timezone Looker THINKS dates are stored in. Will show up as one of the parameters in the SQL Looker generates to convert_timezone in generated SQL, on most dialects. Connections Panel, Query Timezone: This is the timezone Looker will attempt to convert timestamps TO. Shows up as the other parameter in the SQL Looker generates to convert_timezone. User Setting: User Timezone; "User Specific Timezones" related. This will r

27261
andy
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Moderator
Department of Customer LoveModerator
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What is a cURL API call, and what does it look like?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Nov 4, 2020 cURL is a command-line utility available on most Unix/Linux based operating systems which can be used to make an HTTP network request and receive the response either interactively as you type or in a bash shell script. cURL can make any kind of HTTP requests, configure request headers, and upload data in request bodies for POST, PUT, and PATCH requests. For quick-and-dirty testing or exploration of an HTTP service or REST API, curl is a simple but powerful tool.As with any use of the Looker API, the first thing you need to do when using cURL is call /login to authenticate and receive an access_token. The access_token can then be used in subsequent calls to the Looker API.For example, you would do the following (Replacing XXXXX with the appropriate credentials):curl -d "client_id=XXXXXXXXXX&client_secret=XXXXXXXXX" https://mycompany.looker.com:19999/login This will return a response that looks something like:{"access_token":"4QDkCyCtZzYgj4C2p2cj3csJH7zqS5RzK

7961
N
1 month ago
paola
Looker Staff
paolaLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can you format dates in table calculations?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jan 21, 2019 If you have a date field with values such as "2021-01-01", you can use excel formatting to display the date as January 1, 2021. You can also use this approach to only display the month name, such as "January", etc.Excel uses the date January 1, 1900 as serial number 1. This means that January 1, 2008 is serial number 39448. In a table calculation, you can use the diff_days(start_date, end_date) function to return a number between your date field and January 1, 2008. Once you have that number, you can add 39448 to it.Given the above, this is the exact formula which can be used to allow the date to be formatted using the custom format syntax:diff_days(date(2008,01,01), ${orders.created_date}) + 39448 Once we have this defined, we can use the table calculation "Custom..." formatting option to display our dates as January 1, 2008.Outcome in the Explore UI:The available formatting options can be found here.   This content is subject to limited support.             

7281
E
2 months ago
paola
Looker Staff
paolaLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I filter data using table calculations?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Feb 4, 2019 Indirectly yes, example in Looker Docs here.The trick is to use "hide no's from visualization". This requires you to have your "filter condition" as a boolean table calc.Note that this isn't actually filtering in the SQL clause, and that this will only work on result sets with 5000 rows or less. There is a feature request for allowing a result set filter based on table calcs. This content is subject to limited support.                  

53101
robertc
3 months ago
quinn.morrison
Looker Staff
quinn.morrisonLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Is there a limit to the number of looks/tiles I can have on a dashboard?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: May 28, 2020No, but performance can be impaired with too many looks/tiles. We generally recommend a limit of around 25, which is documented here along with a warning in the product when you go above 25. This content is subject to limited support.                 

4121
M4G3
4 months ago
Vincent
Looker Staff
VincentLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I change font size in visualizations?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Jul 11, 2019 It is currently not possible in all visualization styles. But this time we have font control over values in the following visualizations - Bar, Column, Scatterplot, Line, Area.We can also create a “single value visualization" out of a scatterplot which allows us to edit the displayed font size.However, we can use html tags to control font size for the time being.dimension: big_string { html: <p style="font-size:30px"> {{value}} </p> ;; type: string sql: ${TABLE}.string ;; } This content is subject to limited support.                  

27281
Rishi
4 days ago
Vincent
Looker Staff
VincentLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can I use `hidden` on a join?Knowledge Drop

Last Tested: Mar 5, 2021 No, you can use hidden only at the explore and field level (documentation).BUT, there are workarounds. Method 1: use fields: [] instead on the join (documentation). This will effectively do the same thing as hidden would because it tells Looker to not bring any fields into the explore. Caveat: If any current content uses fields from this join, the content will break because the fields are no longer in the explore.For example:join: foo {fields: []} Method 2 (better way): use an empty view_label parameter in the join (documentation).For example:explore: orders {join: users {type: left_outersql_on: ${orders.user_id} = ${users.id} ;;relationship: many_to_oneview_label: ""}} Will show up as this in the explore: This content is subject to limited support.                   

9851
D
2 months ago

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