Forum Discussion
Flattening multiple related rows in Power Query
- 9 years ago
Thanks for the replies! I actually managed to solve this on my own in the end :)
ImkeF - your solution is interesting, I'm guessing FillUp will find the bottom-most non-null value and fill any rows above with it?
My solution - wrote a function that will find and return the first non-null value in a list (or a default if all null), and use that as the aggregator. I then build a list from the original list of column names that will run the operation on each named column:
//FirstNotNull let Source = (sourceList as list) => let firstNotNull = List.First(List.RemoveNulls(sourceList), "Not Applicable") in firstNotNull in Source //DynamicTableGroupColumns let Source = (sourceTable as table, columns as list, aggregateFunction as function) => let result = List.Transform(columns, each // build lists with {columnName, aggregateFunction} let //save current _ (column name) to use in next each statement columnName = _, columnToFunctionList = {columnName, each //_ will be the grouping table as it's called by Table.Group aggregateFunction(Table.Column(_, columnName))} in columnToFunctionList) in result in Source //DynamicTableGroup let Source = (sourceTable as table, groupBy as list, columns as list, aggregateFunction as function) => let result = Table.Group(sourceTable , groupBy, DynamicTableGroupColumns(sourceTable, columns, aggregateFunction)) in result in SourceAny comments on one method being better than the other? Will your method of FillUp into a single column and then expanding the relevant fields be more performant that preparing a list of lists to feed to Table.Group?
EDIT: ImkeF just timed the 2 queries, and filling up into one column and then expanding seemed to take 2min20s, while my approach took 58s! Yesterday I had also timed doing an unpivot/pivot over all columns, and that was taking about 1min45s. I'm not sure how the unpivot/pivot scales with more columns and rows, but I'd assume our 2 methods would scale similarly.
Feel free to use the set of functions I put up in case you find use for them to speed up any queries! Or let me know if don't see similar results :)
Please try with following Power Query in Advanced Editor.
let
Source = Excel.Workbook(File.Contents("C:\11032016\Flattening multiple related rows in Power Query.xlsx"), null, true),
Table1_Table = Source{[Item="Table1",Kind="Table"]}[Data],
#"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Table1_Table,{{"id", Int64.Type}, {"key1", type text}, {"key2", type text}, {"key3", type text}, {"key4", type text}}),
#"Combine" = Combiner.CombineTextByDelimiter(""),
#"GroupRows" = Table.Group( #"Changed Type", {"id"}, {{"key1", each Combine([key1]), type text}, {"key2", each Combine([key2]), type text}, {"key3", each Combine([key3]), type text}, {"key4", each Combine([key4]), type text}} )
in
#"GroupRows"
Best Regards,
Herbert