suggest_explore

Usage

view: view_name {
  dimension: field_name {
    suggest_explore: explore_name
  }
}

Definition

This parameter, used with suggest_dimension, 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, in the suggest_dimension parameter, 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:

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