Generating an attribute if it does not already exist
Contributor II
Either my searching skills are deficient or there isn't an obvious way of doing this...
I am pivoting data which may not or may not generate the attributes I need depending on each example's actual data. This means that I get varying sets of attributes from the operator which is causing havoc later on in the process. I want to generate any missing attributes but I can't find an easy way to do this.
In theory I was just going to add a Generate Attributes operator and create each one conditionally on whether it already exists. But how do I test for the existence of an attribute?
Many thanks!
I am pivoting data which may not or may not generate the attributes I need depending on each example's actual data. This means that I get varying sets of attributes from the operator which is causing havoc later on in the process. I want to generate any missing attributes but I can't find an easy way to do this.
In theory I was just going to add a Generate Attributes operator and create each one conditionally on whether it already exists. But how do I test for the existence of an attribute?
Many thanks!
0
Best Answer
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kayman
Member Posts: 662 
Unicorn
The branch operator allows you to check if an attribute exists or not, but if you have like a lot of them this can become pretty annoying. So in practice we also have a collection of dummy sets (but without actual records) and use the Append Superset operator.5
Answers
Dortmund, Germany
Yes I do. I just came up with what felt like a very hacky way of doing this by creating an exampleset with a single example including all the attributes defaulted to zero plus a static id which I then do a join on to the master example such that any attributes in the master example are retained.
Feels hacky but does seem to work
Thanks,
Paul
Dortmund, Germany