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2115 Topics

Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

500 Error on Add To ProjectKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 2, 2020 Problem: Receiving the error: "Uh Oh! Something went wrong. 500" when selecting "Add to project" from SQL Runner, in order to add a query straight to a derived table view.Console Error: Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 500 (Internal Server Error)Log Error: Looker::Model::InvalidFileNameError : File view_name.view.lkml already exists.Troubleshooting: The root cause of this issue is when we already created a view with the same name. Changing the view name, or deleting the existing view, solved this error. This content is subject to limited support.                  

3370
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

AssertionError in SDK callKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Apr 30, 2020 Users of the SDK have seen this error in the past when using a dictionary syntax rather that using the WriteUser type in the bodyEx. GOODimport looker_sdkfrom looker_sdk import modelsnew_friend = sdk.update_user(user_id=#, body=models.WriteUser(first_name="first_name_test",last_name="last_name_test")) Ex. BAD import looker_sdknew_friend = sdk.me()print(new_friend)updated_user = sdk.update_user(user_id = #, body = {"User":{"first_name" : "first_name_test","last_name" : "last_name_test","group_ids" : "[#]"}} )print("updated_user: " + updated_user)  Does that mean when we reference the body we should always put a 'Write' in front of the call?Explanation that we could share with the customer:We have model objects (or classes) that we pass args into and Looker does the formatting for us. Our team is currently working on making the body parameters a bit more friendly, but right now, we recommend passing them into the model classes/objects and let the SDK do the work

120
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to Handle \n in dimensions - Newline_to_br LiquidKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Oct 24, 2019 Liquid Reference for newlinedimension: variable {type: stringsql: ${TABLE}.variable ;;html: {{ variable | newline_to_br }} ;;} This content is subject to limited support.                  

1830
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Nicholas_Alexander
Moderator
Nicholas_AlexanderModerator
published in Common Account Questions

Can I enable SAML on my instance?

Looking to create some added/different security to your Looker instance via SAML? Looker is well equipped for that, and multiple customers have enabled this for peace of mind, to fit their use case, or various other reasons! Have a look at this intuitive doc, on how to get started, the setup needed, and how to work with us to get this enabled!  Question on this process? Feel free to comment below

680
Nicholas_Alexander
Moderator
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Troubleshooting Slack action errorsKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 28, 2020 You may see one of the following error messages when setting up and testing the Slack action in the Action Hub:Error: An error occurred for action looker-integration://1::slack_app. The action could not be executed.There may be a temporary issue with Looker instance=https://host_name.looker.com. Please try again in a few minutes.Both of these are catch-all error messages, so they could indicate any of a number of different errors. Most likely the error is a 500, so you can find the error in the logs if your instance is self-hosted. If your instance is Looker-hosted, you can submit a request to help.looker.com and the Looker Support team can help investigate. Since 500 errors are considered bugs, you can file a bug for the specific error in the logs (not the catch-all error). The Looker Support team can help when filing the bug.SLACK::WEB::API::ERRORS::SLACKERRORIf you see an error like this, the error is coming directly from Slack. You can see what it means in

5110
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why do my queries with table calcs have such a long post-process/unaccounted for time when downloading?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jun 24, 2020 There could be a few reasons for this, first off table calcs operate over the entire result set. So say one of the calcs makes a list out of the column, that is a 5000 entry list in the simplest case, 50000 in the 20+ minute case. If you then try to take the maxof that, one of these will take much longer. It doesn't have to be a crazy looking table calc to be gnarly in terms of processing time.Second, there is also a global limit of 3 table calcs at a time that one looker instance (or node in a cluster) will process on the backend.  So very long time intervals might include the time queued waiting for one of those table calc worker threads to get free.So what next? The less drastic though less feasible would be to suggest you change there querying habits. Moving table calc logic into the lookml/database OR being wary of how many queries they are firing off/downloading that contain table calcs. The more drastic option but perhaps the more scalable, would be clu

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Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Filtering on Last Business day of MonthKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 2, 2021  dimension: returned_last_business_day {type: yesnosql: CASE WHEN EXTRACT( day from DATEADD(day,2,${returned_date_raw}) ) = 1 AND ${returned_day_of_week} = "Friday"THEN trueWHEN EXTRACT( day from DATEADD(day,3,${returned_date_raw}) ) = 1 AND ${returned_day_of_week} = "Friday" then trueWHEN EXTRACT( day from DATEADD(day,1,${returned_date_raw}) ) = 1 then true else false END;; Basically, what this does is check to see if the second to last day of the month is Friday, if so that means that the last day of the month for that month was Saturday. If the third to last day of the month is Friday, it means that the last day of that month was a Sunday.  This content is subject to limited support.                  

1540
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What does the Ordinal Scale Type visualization setting do?Knowledge Drop

Last tested; Jan 13, 2021 The short explanation is that with Ordinal Scale Type setting, data is plotted along the x-axis as evenly-spaced, discrete entries, regardless of relative distance between data points. (https://docs.looker.com/exploring-data/visualizing-query-results/column-options#scale_type)The longer explanation:Let’s say you have a dataset like the following, where you have a gap in data from December 26th to December 27th (December 25th has data as shown in the data table, it looks empty here because it is a small number for the scale of this visualization).If you would like to show your data over the full timeframe that the data was collected, you can use the “Automatic based on Data” Scale Type (as shown above), or the “Time” Scale Type. However, if you do not want to show this gap, the Ordinal Scale Type will only plot the data from the data table. This content is subject to limited support.                  

840
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

SQL Error: relation "schema.table" does not exist"Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Feb 2021 This error message can appear when a table no longer exists but still shows in the list of tables for this schema.Error Message Error Running SQL ERROR: relation "schema.table" does not existTroubleshooting Go to the gear option next to the connection name and hit "Refresh Tables and Schema" if the table has been renamed/deleted then it will no longer show up under the reference name that is causing the error.This can also happen if the table is defined with mixed-case spelling and you try to query it without double-quotes. See this stackoverflow postIn other words, if hotelList was created with mixed-case spelling, this won't work:play_arrowSELECT *FROM hotellistLIMIT 10Because the tablename is converted to lowercase when the query is run, this also won't work:play_arrowSELECT *FROM hotelListLIMIT 10To avoid this issue, use double-quotes to use the specific mixed-case spelling as the table is defined. This will work:play_arrowSELECT *FROM "hotelList"LIMIT 10It is

34780
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
Department of Customer LoveLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

SQL Error: "Syntax error at or near:"Knowledge Drops

  Last tested: Feb 2021 Overview This SQL error generally means that somewhere in the query, there is invalid syntax.Some common examples:Using a database-specific SQL for the wrong database (eg BigQuery supports DATE_ADD, but Redshift supports DATEADD) Typo in the SQL (missing comma, misspelled word, etc) Missing a sql clause (missed from, join, select, etc) An object does not exist in the database or is not accessible from the current query (eg referencing orders.id when there is no orders table joined in the current query, etc)In some circumstances, the database error message may display extra detail about where the error was raised, which can be helpful in narrowing down where to look.Error Message SQL ERROR: syntax error at or nearTroubleshooting This should generally be the first step to troubleshoot any SQL syntax error in a large query: iteratively comment out blocks of SQL to narrow down where the problem is.TIP: To make this process easier, change the group by clause to use p

767640
Department of Customer Love
Looker Staff
1 year ago
xin
Looker Staff
xinLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Custom filter: filter the last day of each month/quarter until yesterdayKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 3, 2020 Some users might have cumulative data ( such as running total partition by month/quarter ) on monthly or quarterly basis, and usually it's quite hard to query the sum of each month/quarter because there's no existing filter option to filter the last day of each month/quarter with a very simple filter expression. However, custom filter might help in this case:Last day of each quarter until yesterday:(coalesce(if(extract_months(add_days(1, ${orders.created_date}))<=3,1,null),if(extract_months(add_days(1, ${orders.created_date}))<=6,2,null),if(extract_months(add_days(1, ${orders.created_date}))<=9,3,null),if(extract_months(add_days(1, ${orders.created_date}))<=12,4,null),null)=coalesce(if(extract_months(${orders.created_date})<=3,1,null),if(extract_months(${orders.created_date})<=6,2,null),if(extract_months(${orders.created_date})<=9,3,null),if(extract_months(${orders.created_date})<=12,4,null),null)+1 OR extract_years(add_days(1, ${orders.

6170
xin
Looker Staff
1 year ago
xin
Looker Staff
xinLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to filter complete weeks in the last quarterKnowledge Drop

Last tested; Jan 3, 2020 For some analysis, you might want to get only the completed weeks in the last quarter, for example, if the first day of Q4 2019 (2019-10-01) is Tuesday, then the start day should be 2019-09-30, and the last day of the quarter is 2019-12-29 (Sunday).We can use the below SQL to create a yesno filter, the yes value will filter out all the dates of the complete weeks.BigQuery:${date_dimension}>=date_trunc(date_add(date_trunc(current_date(), quarter), interval -1 quarter), ISOWEEK) AND${date_dimension}<date_add(date_trunc(date_add(date_trunc(current_date(), quarter), interval -1 week), ISOWEEK), interval 1 week) Redshift and Snowflake:${date_dimension}>=date_trunc('week', dateadd('quarter', -1, date_trunc('quarter', current_date)))::dateAND${date_dimension}<dateadd('week', 1, date_trunc('week', dateadd('week', -1, date_trunc('quarter', current_date))))::date Postgres:${date_dimension}>=date_trunc('week', date_trunc('quarter', now())-interval '3 months

7940
xin
Looker Staff
1 year ago
xin
Looker Staff
xinLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Can slack actionhub and Lookerbot use the same bot user?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 15, 2019 Yes. Lookerbot is also an action hub.  This content is subject to limited support.                   

70
xin
Looker Staff
1 year ago
xin
Looker Staff
xinLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What is case sensitive in LookerKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 31, 2019 1. Filename: it is case sensitive, however, we rarely have any impact since we don't reference the file name in the lookml.2. View name, dashboard name and field name: it is case sensitive, and we will have to ensure we reference the view, dashboard and fields with the correct case.3. Filter value: By default Looker filter UI is case sensitive, this also depends on the sql dialect and the settings in Looker, and it can be case sensitive. There's a parameter for it: https://docs.looker.com/reference/model-params/case_sensitive-for-model4. Referencing lookml field in Liquid: this is also case sensitive. This content is subject to limited support.                  

2260
xin
Looker Staff
1 year ago
xin
Looker Staff
xinLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why I cannot see the filter tab in the dashboard schedule modal?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 9, 2020This issue could happen if one of the dashboard filters is broken and requires a fix. Typically this happens to the field type filter that the underlying field is renamed or removed. Once the filter is fixed, the filter tab in the dashboard schedule modal should show up. This content is subject to limited support.                  

70
xin
Looker Staff
1 year ago
xin
Looker Staff
xinLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

System activity history explore: More Granular History Created DimensionKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 18, 2020 These can be useful when you have to check history counts in a smaller interval during performance investigation. For this we can create a table calculations that look like the following:Every 10 minutesif(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<11, "0-10",if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<21, "10-20",if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<31, "20-30",if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<41, "30-40",if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<51, "40-50","50-00"))))) Every 5 minutesif(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<6, 5,if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<11, 10,if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<16, 15,if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<21, 20,if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<26, 25, if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<31, 30, if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<36, 35, if(extract_minutes(${history.created_time})<41, 40, if(extract_minu

190
xin
Looker Staff
1 year ago
W
Looker Staff
wonkyoung.park
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why does my explore take so long to load?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jan 19, 2021 Does the explore in question have a lot of fields and joins? If so, the current advice is that we should reduce the number of fields and joins in an explore until it's "small" enough" but we don't have a specific target.One thing to note is that hiding some of the fields with the hidden parameter or the fields parameter would not help much because our backend would still have to do a lot of work to gather all the data from all the LookML files referenced in the explore. This content is subject to limited support.                  

1120
W
Looker Staff
1 year ago
W
Looker Staff
wonkyoung.park
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

JS Console: "dashboards cached_results miss for id your_dashboard_id"Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Jul 20, 2020 Problem: You're seeing dashboards cached_results miss for id <your_dashboard_id> in the JS console on an embeeded dashboardExplanation: No need to be alarmed. This message is harmless. It's logged by the front-end code whenever the /cached_results endpoint was not used to accelerate the dashboard load and that endpoint is never used for embedded dashboards.  This content is subject to limited support.                  

130
W
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vitor.leepkalnLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

My date filter is returning results from one day laterKnowledge Drop

Last tested: May 24, 2019 ProblemWhile filtering on a specific date, or by last x days, the query returns results from one day later.Potential SolutionsIf it's only a date (YYYY-MM-DD), with no time info, make sure your dimension_group contains a datatype: date parameter. Check to make sure that timezone conversion is happening or not happening as expecting.   This content is subject to limited support.                    

640
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vitor.leepkalnLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

How to find out the remote URL of the repository connected to a Looker projectKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 3, 2019 Those with multiple projects could be using different repositories, and it's hard to troubleshoot when we don't know where the remote is hosted.Check in Looker Go to "Project Settings" and scroll to the bottom of the page - here you will see the Remote Origin URL:Check in Looker serverIf you have access to the Looker server, navigate to the project directory inside of the models directory /looker/models/project_x and run the following code:git config --get remote.origin.url The following info will be displayed:lookeruser@instance:~/looker/models/project$ git config --get remote.origin.urlgit@github.com::org/repo.gitshowing the repo. This content is subject to limited support.                  

1320
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vitor.leepkalnLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

What file do Developers see first when they access the IDE?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Aug 12, 2020 The ProblemAn admin would like to select which file their developers see first when they open the project from the Develop tab. Maybe it's a welcome file, or one with instructions. There isn't an option to select this, so how can they do this in practice?A SolutionLooker follows a simple hierarchy when selecting the files to display: A README document file Any other document file Model file Any other fileThe solution for this problem is for them to rename the file they wish to display first as a README.md file, as that will be displayed first, before any other file type. This content is subject to limited support.                  

40
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Error starting up Looker: NoMethodError: undefined method `split' for nil:NilClassKnowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 3, 2020 This is an extreme edge case where this occurred because a user was running the first Java11 stable build ever from 2018 (documentation). Basically when first starting up Looker we try to figure out what version of java you are running, and we do that by parsing the individual pieces of 11.X.XX_XXX. We assume it'll take that form since all (or almost all) other builds besides the very first one from 2018 are like that, and that assumption is being broken here in a way Looker can't handle.To resolve this error if you come upon it, you should update your Java version to Java11 latest.Full error message:[looker@looker looker]$ ./looker startNoMethodError: undefined method `split' for nil:NilClassinitialize at uri:classloader:/helltool-component-build/lib/helltool/java_version.class:31<module:Looker> at uri:classloader:/helltool-component-build/lib/looker.class:401<main> at uri:classloader:/helltool-component-build/lib/looker.class:5load at org/jruby/Ru

7420
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why do I see nulls returned for the Fields Used field in the System Activity History explore?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 23, 2020 These are generated by the queries Looker runs to retrieve filter suggestions!To double check this, we can bring the history ID field into the query and link out to the Queries page to see the source. This content is subject to limited support.                  

400
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Why am I seeing a `SELECT boundary AS boundary FROM (SELECT ...)` query in our DB? Dimension fill!Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 29, 2020 This query is being generated from Dimension Fill in explores using time based dimensions. The SQL here doesn't show on the SQL tab and gets run separately and added into the results after. This can be disabled on a field by field basis by setting allow_fill: no (documentation).The exact SQL of this query will be dependent on the dialect and timeframe. Couple examples below.SnowflakeSELECT boundary AS boundary FROM (SELECT TO_CHAR(DATE_TRUNC('second', (DATEADD('month', 2, DATEADD('month', -1, DATE_TRUNC('month', CURRENT_DATE()))))), 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') AS boundary ) boundaries BigQuerySELECT boundary AS boundary FROM (SELECT FORMAT_TIMESTAMP('%F %T', TIMESTAMP_TRUNC((TIMESTAMP_ADD(TIMESTAMP_TRUNC(TIMESTAMP_TRUNC(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP(), DAY), WEEK(MONDAY)), INTERVAL (-4 * 7) DAY)), WEEK(MONDAY))) AS boundary ) boundaries This content is subject to limited support.                  

750
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago
V
Looker Staff
vishal.dharmadhikariLooker Staff
published in Technical Tips & Tricks

Directory/folder added via the command line not showing up in UI?Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Sep 29, 2020 The UI will hide empty folders or folders that contain only extension-less files. To get the directory to show up in the UI, we can create a file in the directory/folder and add a .txt extension.Please note that we should generally avoid making changes via the command line. Looker doesn't use pure Git, it also uses JGit to invoke Git, so trying to mix the two can get very messy and cause issues down the line.If you have a valid use case for utilizing the command line to make changes, we do have a refresh webhook that will recognize new folders created. This content is subject to limited support.                  

80
V
Looker Staff
1 year ago

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