Categories:

Semi-structured and structured data functions (Cast)

AS_ARRAY

Casts a VARIANT value to an ARRAY value.

See also:

AS_*<object_type>* , AS_OBJECT

Syntax

AS_ARRAY( <variant_expr> )

Arguments

variant_expr

An expression that evaluates to a value of type VARIANT.

Returns

The function returns a value of type ARRAY or NULL:

  • If the type of the value in the variant_expr argument is ARRAY, the function returns a value of type ARRAY.
  • If the type of the value in the variant_expr argument doesn’t match the type of the output value, the function returns NULL.
  • If the variant_expr argument is NULL, the function returns NULL.

Usage notes

Examples

Create a table and load data into it:

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE as_array_example (
  array1 VARIANT,
  array2 VARIANT);

INSERT INTO as_array_example (array1, array2)
  SELECT
    TO_VARIANT(TO_ARRAY('Example')),
    TO_VARIANT(ARRAY_CONSTRUCT('Array-like', 'example'));

Use the AS_ARRAY function in a query to cast a VARIANT value to ARRAY values:

SELECT AS_ARRAY(array1) AS array1,
       AS_ARRAY(array2) AS array2
  FROM as_array_example;
+-------------+-----------------+
| ARRAY1      | ARRAY2          |
|-------------+-----------------|
| [           | [               |
|   "Example" |   "Array-like", |
| ]           |   "example"     |
|             | ]               |
+-------------+-----------------+