suggestions (for fields)

This page refers to the suggestions parameter that is part of a dimension , filter field , or parameter .

You can also use suggestions as part of a view , as described on the suggestions (for views) parameter documentation page.

Usage

view: view_name {
  dimension: field_name {
     suggestions 
 : 
 [ 
 "suggestion string" 
 , 
 "suggestion string" 
 , 
 "…" 
 ] 
  }
}

Definition

When a user filters an Explore on a field type that supports suggestions , by default Looker will suggest possible values for the field (see Changing filter suggestions for information about how you can affect filter suggestions). To provide suggestions for a filter field, Looker executes a query on your database to retrieve a list of distinct values for the field. Looker typically generates these suggestions by executing a query such as the following on the filter field:

 SELECT DISTINCT field_name FROM table
WHERE (field_name LIKE '%' OR field_name LIKE '% %')
GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1 LIMIT 1000 

The suggestion parameter lets you hard-code the list of suggested values for a dimension , filter field , or parameter that will appear when someone uses that field to filter a query.

If the field is in a large table, this query can be too slow or create too large a database load. By using suggestions you can hard-code a list of possible values instead and improve performance.

The suggestions parameter is also useful because it lets you specify a more limited list if you don't want certain values from a field to appear as suggestions.

Examples

Replace the default suggestions for the colors dimension with a hard-coded list:

 dimension: colors {
  type: string
  sql: ${TABLE}.colors ;;
  suggestions: ["red", "yellow", "blue"]
}