Value lists

Overview

Value lists allow you to persist a group of values in a list, for use throughout a workflow. You can centrally view and edit this list, and any changes to it will be pushed to all transforms where it is being used.

This may be useful in a scenario where a list of diagnosis codes are entered in multiple filters that may change over time as you build you analysis, or when you have a single parameter you are using in multiple places that you want to be able to quickly change anywhere.

Building lists

To create and update value lists, you can click the Lists button at the top left of workflow tool top bar.

You can create, modify, and delete lists from this interface.

For bulk importing you can copy/paste values from any standard spreadsheet program, or import them from a csv or json file. Please note that string list values should not be quoted — learn more about list types below.

You can then reference the list in transforms throughout your workflow anywhere that you could input multiple values.

If you update the values within a list, all transforms that reference the list will be marked as edited.

Importing lists

Values can be copied into lists from any spreadsheet program by directly using the clipboard. For bulk or scripted actions, you may also import multiple lists as a JSON or CSV file. Note that any list exports will follow the same format.

CSV specification

Each variable in your CSV will represent one list, with the first row containing the name of the list. E.g.:

Fruits	Vegetables	Item_codes
Strawberry	Broccoli	1
Tomato	Asparagus	2
Apple	Spinach	3

JSON specification

The same set of value lists can be imported via JSON, with the following format:

[
    { 
        "name": "Fruits",
        "values": ["Strawberry", "Tomato", "Apple"]
    },
    { 
        "name": "Vegetables",
        "values": ["Broccoli", "Asparagus", "Spinach"]
    },
    { 
        "name": "Item_codes",
        "values": ["1", "2", "3"]
        // This is identical:
        // "values": [1, 2, 3]
    },
]

List types

All variables in Redivis have a defined type. When using lists to filter rows the list type needs to be the same (or coercible to) the variable that is being filtering on.

Redivis will automatically determine the most specific type for all the values in a list, falling back to the "universal type" of string.

For example, these combinations will yield the corresponding specific types and can be compared to the following types:

Values	Type	Can compare to
1, 2, 3	Integer	Integer, Float, String
1, 2.0, 3	Integer	Integer, Float, String
1, 1.0, 1.1	Float	Float, String
1, 2.0, a	String	String
1971-01-01, 1972-02-02, 1973-03-03	Date	Date, String
1971-01-01, a, b	String	String
1970-01-01 12:00:00, 1970-01-01 12:30:00	DateTime	DateTime, Date, String

Note list values should never be quoted, unless you specifically want to match against a quote character.