layout: global title: LATERAL VIEW Clause displayTitle: LATERAL VIEW Clause license: | Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

 http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Description

The LATERAL VIEW clause is used in conjunction with generator functions such as EXPLODE, which will generate a virtual table containing one or more rows. LATERAL VIEW will apply the rows to each original output row.

Syntax

LATERAL VIEW [ OUTER ] generator_function ( expression [ , ... ] ) [ table_alias ] AS column_alias [ , ... ]

Parameters

  • OUTER

    If OUTER specified, returns null if an input array/map is empty or null.

  • generator_function

    Specifies a generator function (EXPLODE, INLINE, etc.).

  • table_alias

    The alias for generator_function, which is optional.

  • column_alias

    Lists the column aliases of generator_function, which may be used in output rows. We may have multiple aliases if generator_function have multiple output columns.

Examples

CREATE TABLE person (id INT, name STRING, age INT, class INT, address STRING);
INSERT INTO person VALUES
    (100, 'John', 30, 1, 'Street 1'),
    (200, 'Mary', NULL, 1, 'Street 2'),
    (300, 'Mike', 80, 3, 'Street 3'),
    (400, 'Dan', 50, 4, 'Street 4');

SELECT * FROM person
    LATERAL VIEW EXPLODE(ARRAY(30, 60)) tableName AS c_age
    LATERAL VIEW EXPLODE(ARRAY(40, 80)) AS d_age;
+------+-------+-------+--------+-----------+--------+--------+
|  id  | name  |  age  | class  |  address  | c_age  | d_age  |
+------+-------+-------+--------+-----------+--------+--------+
| 100  | John  | 30    | 1      | Street 1  | 30     | 40     |
| 100  | John  | 30    | 1      | Street 1  | 30     | 80     |
| 100  | John  | 30    | 1      | Street 1  | 60     | 40     |
| 100  | John  | 30    | 1      | Street 1  | 60     | 80     |
| 200  | Mary  | NULL  | 1      | Street 2  | 30     | 40     |
| 200  | Mary  | NULL  | 1      | Street 2  | 30     | 80     |
| 200  | Mary  | NULL  | 1      | Street 2  | 60     | 40     |
| 200  | Mary  | NULL  | 1      | Street 2  | 60     | 80     |
| 300  | Mike  | 80    | 3      | Street 3  | 30     | 40     |
| 300  | Mike  | 80    | 3      | Street 3  | 30     | 80     |
| 300  | Mike  | 80    | 3      | Street 3  | 60     | 40     |
| 300  | Mike  | 80    | 3      | Street 3  | 60     | 80     |
| 400  | Dan   | 50    | 4      | Street 4  | 30     | 40     |
| 400  | Dan   | 50    | 4      | Street 4  | 30     | 80     |
| 400  | Dan   | 50    | 4      | Street 4  | 60     | 40     |
| 400  | Dan   | 50    | 4      | Street 4  | 60     | 80     |
+------+-------+-------+--------+-----------+--------+--------+

SELECT c_age, COUNT(1) FROM person
    LATERAL VIEW EXPLODE(ARRAY(30, 60)) AS c_age
    LATERAL VIEW EXPLODE(ARRAY(40, 80)) AS d_age 
GROUP BY c_age;
+--------+-----------+
| c_age  | count(1)  |
+--------+-----------+
| 60     | 8         |
| 30     | 8         |
+--------+-----------+

SELECT * FROM person
    LATERAL VIEW EXPLODE(ARRAY()) tableName AS c_age;
+-----+-------+------+--------+----------+--------+
| id  | name  | age  | class  | address  | c_age  |
+-----+-------+------+--------+----------+--------+
+-----+-------+------+--------+----------+--------+

SELECT * FROM person
    LATERAL VIEW OUTER EXPLODE(ARRAY()) tableName AS c_age;
+------+-------+-------+--------+-----------+--------+
|  id  | name  |  age  | class  |  address  | c_age  |
+------+-------+-------+--------+-----------+--------+
| 100  | John  | 30    | 1      | Street 1  | NULL   |
| 200  | Mary  | NULL  | 1      | Street 2  | NULL   |
| 300  | Mike  | 80    | 3      | Street 3  | NULL   |
| 400  | Dan   | 50    | 4      | Street 4  | NULL   |
+------+-------+-------+--------+-----------+--------+

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