UDF: can we pass a column as parameter?

Hii Marcl4 

 

In DAX UDFs you cannot pass a column reference as a parameter.
UDF parameters only accept expressions, not real column metadata, so functions like SUMMARIZE, GROUPBY, SELECTCOLUMNS, etc. cannot use a parameter in place of a column name. This is a current limitation of DAX: column arguments must be hard-coded inside the function body.

To achieve dynamic behavior, you must either:

• write separate UDFs for each column, or

• redesign the logic to work on values (e.g., using VALUES() or SELECTEDVALUE()), not structural column references.

There is no workaround today to dynamically inject a column into SUMMARIZE via a UDF parameter.

Hi Marcl4  

 

You used the wrong parameter type. Pls change the type of SourceColumn to anyref, as below:

 

DEFINE
    FUNCTION pbi.Subtitle = (
        SourceTable : table expr,
        SourceColumn : anyref,
        MaxItems : scalar
    )
    =>
        VAR BaseTable =
            FILTER(
                SUMMARIZE(
                    SourceTable,
                    SourceColumn,
                    "Cnt", [#Projects]
                ),
                [Cnt] > 0
            )

 

 

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Thank you~

Marcl4 

Workarounds:

 

1. Create separate UDFs for each column:

pbi.SubtitleCountry = pbi.Subtitle(FACT_ITA, DIM_Geo[CountryName], 😎
pbi.SubtitleRegion = pbi.Subtitle(FACT_ITA, DIM_Geo[RegionName], 😎

 

2. Use Field Parameters to pass column names (not supported in UDFs yet).

 

3. Rewrite as regular measure with SWITCH:

Sub_UDF =
SWITCH(
SELECTEDVALUE(ColumnSelector[ColumnName]),
"Country", "Countries: " & pbi.SubtitleCountry(FACT_ITA, 8),
"Region", "Regions: " & pbi.SubtitleRegion(FACT_ITA, 8),
BLANK()
)

 

If this answer helped, please click Kudos or Accept as Solution.
-Kedar
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kedar-pande