Applies to: Databricks SQL Databricks Runtime 15.3 and later
Returns a set of rows by un-nesting variantExpr using outer semantics.
Syntax
variant_explode_outer ( variantExpr )
Arguments
variantExpr: A VARIANT expression, representing a VARIANT object or VARIANT ARRAY.
Returns
A set of rows composed of the elements of the VARIANT ARRAYor the keys and values of the VARIANT object.
The columns produced by variant_explode are:
pos INT
key STRING
value VARIANT.
When exploding a VARIANT object, the output key and value columns represent the keys and values of the object.
When exploding a VARIANT array, the output key is always null, and the output value column represents the elements of the array.
If variantExpr is NULL, or is not either a VARIANT ARRAY with at least one element or an OBJECT with at least one field, a single row of NULLs is produced.
To return no rows in this case use the variant_explode function.
Examples
SQL
-- Simple example
> SELECT *
FROM variant_explode_outer(parse_json('[1, "a", {"b": "hello"}]'));
pos key value
--- ---- -------------
0 NULL 1
1 NULL "a"
2 NULL {"b":"hello"}
> SELECT *
FROM variant_explode_outer(parse_json('{"foo":1,"bar":"hello"}'));
pos key value
--- ---- -------------
0 bar "hello"
1 foo 1
-- null input
> SELECTvalueFROM variant_explode_outer(null) AS t(pos, key, value);
null
-- Not an array or object input
> SELECTvalueFROM variant_explode_outer(parse_json('123')) AS t(pos, key, value);
null
-- Using lateral correlation
> SELECT t.value ASouter, u.value ASinnerFROM variant_explode_outer(parse_json('[[1, 2], [3, 4]]')) AS t,
LATERAL variant_explode(t.value) AS u;
outer inner
----- -----
[1,2] 1
[1,2] 2
[3,4] 3
[3,4] 4