Snowflake Create View with JSON (VARIANT) field as columns with dynamic keys - sql

Question

I am having a problem creating VIEWS with Snowflake that has VARIANT field which stores JSON data whose keys are dynamic and keys definition is stored in another table. So I want to create a VIEW that has dynamic columns based on the foreign key.
Here are my table looks like:
companies:
| id | name |
| -- | ---- |
| 1 | Company 1 |
| 2 | Company 2 |
invoices:
| id | invoice_number | custom_fields | company_id |
| -- | -------------- | ------------- | ---------- |
| 1 | INV-01 | {"1": "Joe", "3": true, "5": "2020-12-12"} | 1 |
| 2 | INV-01 | {"2":"Hello", "4": 1000} | 2 |
customization_fields:
| id | label | data_type | company_id |
| -- | ----- | --------- | ---------- |
| 1 | manager | text | 1 |
| 2 | reference | text | 2 |
| 3 | emailed | boolean | 1 |
| 4 | account | integer | 2 |
| 5 | due_date | date | 1 |
So I want to create a view for getting each companies invoices something like:
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW companies_invoices AS SELECT * FROM invoices WHERE company_id = 1
which should get a result like below:
| id | invoice_number | company_id | manager | emailed | due_date |
| -- | -------------- | ---------- | ------- | ------- | -------- |
| 1 | INV-01 | 1 | Joe | true | 2020-12-12 |
So my challenge above here is I cannot make sure the keys when I write the query. If I know that I could write
SELECT
id,
invoice_number,
company_id,
custom_fields:"1" AS manager,
custom_fields:"3" AS emailed,
custom_fields:"5" AS due_date
FROM invoices
WHERE company_id = 1
These keys and labels are written in the customization_fields table, so I tried different ways and I am not able to do that.
So could anyone tell me if we can do or not? If we can please give me an example so it would really help.

Answer 1

You cannot do what you want to do with a view. A view has a fixed set of columns and they have specific types. Retrieving a dynamic set of columns requires some other mechanism.

Answer 2

If you're trying to change the number of columns or the names of the columns based on the rows in the customization_fields table, you can't do it in a view.
If you have a defined schema and just need to grab dynamic JSON properties, you may want to consider looking into Snowflake's GET function. It allows you to get any part of a JSON using a string for the path rather than using a literal path in the SQL statement. For example:
create temp table foo(v variant);
insert into foo select parse_json('{ "name":"John", "age":30, "car":null }');
-- This uses a literal path in the SQL to get to a JSON property
select v:name::string as first_name from foo;
-- This uses the GET function to get the value from a path in a string
select get(v, 'name')::string as first_name from foo;
You can replace the 'name' in the second parameter of the GET function with the value stored in the customization_fields table.

Answer 3

In SF, You will have to use a Stored Proc function to retrieve the dynamic set of columns