Forum Discussion

julhelp's avatar
julhelp
Helper I
4 years ago
Solved

Automatically generate column caption in power query

Hi,   i have a question aubout power query. Is there any posibillity to generate automatically the column caption from an table which is retrieved via api from a database?    So far i have to har...
Need Help
  • AlexisOlson's avatar
    AlexisOlson
    4 years ago

    Since it's a record column, I think you'd use Record.FieldNames instead.

     

    Maybe like this:

    [...]
    #"Custom items" = Table.ExpandListColumn(#"Removed Columns", "data"),
    ColumnList = Record.FieldNames(#"Custom items"{0}[data]),
    #"Expanded data" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Custom items", "data",
        ColumnList, List.Transform(ColumnList, each "data." & _))
in
    #"Expanded data"
mahoneypat's avatar
mahoneypat
Microsoft Employee
4 years ago

Not totally clear on your scenario, but you can use Table.ColumnNames() on your [data] column to dynamically generated a list of the column names and use that in place of the hard-coded list.

 

Pat

  • AlexisOlson's avatar
    AlexisOlson
    Super User
    4 years ago

    Since it's a record column, I think you'd use Record.FieldNames instead.

     

    Maybe like this:

    [...]
    #"Custom items" = Table.ExpandListColumn(#"Removed Columns", "data"),
    ColumnList = Record.FieldNames(#"Custom items"{0}[data]),
    #"Expanded data" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Custom items", "data",
        ColumnList, List.Transform(ColumnList, each "data." & _))
in
    #"Expanded data"
    • julhelp's avatar
      julhelp
      Helper I
      4 years ago

      Yes that was exactly what i was looking for 😉 

    • julhelp's avatar
      julhelp
      Helper I
      4 years ago

      hi AlexisOlson,

       

      Is there also a possibility, if in the output table there are still several columns with records to output them also variably? Or du i have to output them step by step?

       

       

      • AlexisOlson's avatar
        AlexisOlson
        Super User
        4 years ago

        You could probably do it but it would likely be more trouble than it's worth unless you have a whole bunch of columns to expand.