Composing Functions (Advanced Usage)

To see functions you can use with this syntax, checkout the aggregation functions and the transformation functions.

Any function with a parameter with the type signature [string or nested] is able to accept the following as a value:

1. a string constant that represents a property of the model

2. an object of the form:

   {
       "alias_ref": "string",
       "nested_function": {"...":  "..."}
   }
   

   Only one of alias_ref or nested_function may be present at a time. See the following explanations of each.

Alias References

The alias_ref field allows specifying another selected column’s alias to use as input to the function. This example uses an alias_ref to pull in another column to the add function:

{
    "select": [
        {
            "function": "abs",
            "alias": "absLoan",
            "parameters": {
                "property": "loan"
            }
        },
        {
            "function": "add",
            "alias": "plus2",
            "parameters": {
                "left": 2,
                "right": {
                    "alias_ref": "absLoan"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

This request returns:

{
    "query_result": [
        {
            "absLoan": 55.45,
            "plus2": 57.45
        }
    ]
}

Nested Functions

The nested_function field allows specifying another function definition to use as input. Here’s an example of how to calculate absolute error for a regression model. In this example, we pass the nested subtract function as input to the abs function via the nested_function object for the property parameter of abs:

{
    "select": [
        {
            "function": "abs",
            "alias": "abs_error",
            "parameters": {
                "property": {
                    "nested_function": {
                        "function": "subtract",
                        "alias": "error",
                        "parameters": {
                            "left": "Predicted_FICO_Score",
                            "right": {
                                "alias_ref": "ground_truth"
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "property": "Predicted_FICO_Score"
        },
        {
            "property": "Consumer_Credit_Score",
            "alias": "ground_truth"
        }
    ]
}

This query returns:

{
    "query_result": [
        {
            "Consumer_Credit_Score": 660,
            "Predicted_FICO_Score": 688.10004,
            "abs_error": 28.100040000000035
        },
        {
            "Consumer_Credit_Score": 663,
            "Predicted_FICO_Score": 681,
            "abs_error": 18
        },
        "..."
    ]
}

Note

If you use the same function multiple times in a query, you need to give each one a distinct “alias”. Otherwise, the names will conflict.