Generating an attribute if it does not already exist

PaulMPaulM Member Posts: 17 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!

Best Answer

Answers

  • MartinLiebigMartinLiebig Administrator, Moderator, Employee, RapidMiner Certified Analyst, RapidMiner Certified Expert, University Professor Posts: 3,503 RM Data Scientist
    Hi @PaulM,
    so you have a list of all attributes which could possible exist?

    BR,
    Martin
    - Sr. Director Data Solutions, Altair RapidMiner -
    Dortmund, Germany
  • PaulMPaulM Member Posts: 17 Contributor II
    Hi @mschmitz,

    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 :smile: If there's a neater solution would love to hear it!

    Thanks,
    Paul
  • MartinLiebigMartinLiebig Administrator, Moderator, Employee, RapidMiner Certified Analyst, RapidMiner Certified Expert, University Professor Posts: 3,503 RM Data Scientist
    Ha, thats round about what i had in mind.

    - Sr. Director Data Solutions, Altair RapidMiner -
    Dortmund, Germany
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