Why isn't my liquid variable passing values into my URL filter correctly? (Community)

View the original community article here

Last Tested: Jan 29, 2020

There are two main reasons that this happens:

1. The values are not url-encoded (can be solved by using {{value | url_encode}} )
2. The values have special matches (advanced) filter expression characters in them. In some cases this can be fixed by using filterable_value instead of just value , but this won't work for all special characters. If you want to guarantee that the value will be passed into the filter exactly as is, you should specify "type":"=" in the filter_config url parameter. The final URL should look something like this: /dashboards/[DASHBOARD_ID]?filter_config=%7B"Filter%20Name":%5B%7B"type":"%3D","values":%5B%7B"constant":"{{ value | url_encode }}"%7D,%7B%7D%5D,"id":9%7D%5D%7D

Additional resources:

https://help.looker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001161308-How-to-Escape-Commas-in-Filters

https://docs.looker.com/reference/liquid-variables#liquid_variable_definitions