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", "…"]
  }
}

Hierarchy View File view Field Type suggestions

Possible Field Types Dimension, Filter, Parameter Accepts A string or a list of strings

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.

Note: Although Looker caches up to 1,000 results for this query, only the first 100 results appear to the user as filter suggestions.

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.

Caution: The label values from the case parameter will take precedence over suggestions presented to users from the suggestions parameter.

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"]
}