Usage

view: view_name {
  dimension: field_name {
    suggest_dimension: dimension_name
  }
}

Hierarchy

View File

view

Field Type

suggest_dimension

Possible Field Types

Dimension, Dimension Group, Measure, Filter, Parameter

Accepts

A fieldname in the current view or viewname.fieldname

Special Rules

To refer to a field in another view, use viewname.fieldname where viewname is a view joined in the Explore

Definition

This parameter changes how Looker generates suggestions for a filter field or a dimension of type: string 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 large table, this query can be too slow or create too large a database load.

By using suggest_dimension, you can make Looker query an alternative dimension for the suggestion values. If that dimension is defined in a different Explore, suggest_explore tells Looker where to find it. In this case, include both the view name where the dimension is defined and the dimension name in the format view_name.field_name. In addition, ensure that the view is joined to the Explore that is specified in the suggest_explore parameter.

If the dimension is defined in the current view, suggest_explore is not required.

Examples

In this example, instead of looking through a huge list of user names from the event table, we’ve told Looker to query the names from a user table instead:

dimension: event_user_name { type: string sql: ${TABLE}.event_user_name ;; suggest_explore: user suggest_dimension: user.name }

In this example, rather than a different Explore, the suggestion uses a dimension in another view joined to the same Explore:

dimension: event_company_name { type: string sql: ${TABLE}.event_company_name ;; suggest_dimension: company.name }

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