Splitting a string column in BigQuery

23
votes

Let's say I have a table in BigQuery containing 2 columns. The first column represents a name, and the second is a delimited list of values, of arbitrary length. Example:

Name | Scores
-----+-------
Bob  |10;20;20
Sue  |14;12;19;90
Joe  |30;15

I want to transform into columns where the first is the name, and the second is a single score value, like so:

Name,Score
Bob,10
Bob,20
Bob,20
Sue,14
Sue,12
Sue,19
Sue,90
Joe,30
Joe,15

Can this be done in BigQuery alone?

3
google-bigquery

3 Answers

17
votes

Good news everyone! BigQuery can now SPLIT()!

Look at "find all two word phrases that appear in more than one row in a dataset".

There is no current way to split() a value in BigQuery to generate multiple rows from a string, but you could use a regular expression to look for the commas and find the first value. Then run a similar query to find the 2nd value, and so on. They can all be merged into only one query, using the pattern presented in the above example (UNION through commas).

15
votes

Trying to rewrite Elad Ben Akoune's answer in Standart SQL, the query becomes like this;

WITH name_score AS (
SELECT Name, split(Scores,';') AS Score
FROM (
      (SELECT * FROM (SELECT 'Bob' AS Name ,'10;20;20' AS Scores)) 
      UNION ALL 
      (SELECT * FROM (SELECT 'Sue' AS Name ,'14;12;19;90' AS Scores))
      UNION ALL
      (SELECT * FROM (SELECT 'Joe' AS Name ,'30;15' AS Scores))
)) 
SELECT name, score
FROM name_score
CROSS JOIN UNNEST(name_score.score) AS score;

And this outputs;

+------+-------+
| name | score |
+------+-------+
| Bob  | 10    |
| Bob  | 20    |
| Bob  | 20    |
| Sue  | 14    |
| Sue  | 12    |
| Sue  | 19    |
| Sue  | 90    |
| Joe  | 30    |
| Joe  | 15    |
+------+-------+
12
votes

If someone is still looking for an answer

select Name,split(Scores,';') as Score
from (
      # replace the inner custome select with your source table
      select *
      from 
      (select 'Bob' as Name ,'10;20;20' as Scores),
      (select 'Sue' as Name ,'14;12;19;90' as Scores),
      (select 'Joe' as Name ,'30;15' as Scores)
);