suggestions (for Fields)

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

suggestions can also be used as part of a view, described on this documentation page.

Usage

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

Hierarchy

View File

view

Field Type

suggestions

Possible Field Types

Dimension, Filter, Parameter

Accepts

A string or a list of strings

Definition

This parameter lets you hard-code the list of suggested values for a filter field or a dimension of type: string that will appear when someone uses that field to filter a query.

Looker typically generates these suggestions by executing the following query on the filter field:

SELECT DISTINCT <field name> FROM <table> LIMIT 1000

If the field is in a particularly 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, greatly improving performance.

This parameter can also be useful if you do not want certain values from a field to appear as suggestions, by specifying a more limited list.

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"] }