How to Correctly Pass and Use Boolean Values from Datafactory to Databricks Notebook

Question

How can I correctly pass a Boolean value from Datafactory to a Databricks notebook and use it in conditional logic? I configured a pipeline in Datafactory that calls a Databricks notebook. I attempted to pass a Boolean parameter from Datafactory as a string ('False'), and then convert it to a Boolean in the notebook using test_var = bool(dbutils.widgets.get("bool_var")). However, when I print test_var, it outputs True even when 'False' is passed. What steps can I take to fix this issue?

Answer 1

Hi @Glasier

Thanks for the question and using MS Q&A platform.

It seems like the issue is with the way you are passing the Boolean value from Datafactory to the Databricks notebook. When using bool(dbutils.widgets.get("bool_var")), it always evaluates to True because the string is non-empty. To handle this correctly, you should explicitly check the string value and convert it to a Boolean accordingly:

bool_var_str = dbutils.widgets.get("bool_var")


# Convert the string to a Boolean
test_var = bool_var_str.lower() == 'true'

This code snippet ensures that test_var correctly reflects the Boolean value based on the string received from DataFactory. Remember to pass 'False' from DataFactory when you want the Boolean variable to be False, and 'True' when you want it to be True.

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.

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