When I’m working with XML files, or web pages, or any data with columns containing nested tables in Power Query, I often end up having to expand every expandable column in the table and then expanding any new columns that are revealed after that to find the data that I’m looking for. This is a such a pain I thought I’d write a function to do it for me – which is the subject of this post.
For example, consider the following XML:
If you load this into Power Query you will see the following table created for the first step:
To get to a table where all of the data is visible requires clicking on the expand icons in the address and the employees columns (highlighted), and then three more clicks after that. Sigh.
Here’s my function, called ExpandAll, to expand all the columns in a table that can be expanded:
let
//Define function taking two parameters - a table and an optional column number
Source = (TableToExpand as table, optional ColumnNumber as number) =>
let
//If the column number is missing, make it 0
ActualColumnNumber = if (ColumnNumber=null) then 0 else ColumnNumber,
//Find the column name relating to the column number
ColumnName = Table.ColumnNames(TableToExpand){ActualColumnNumber},
//Get a list containing all of the values in the column
ColumnContents = Table.Column(TableToExpand, ColumnName),
//Iterate over each value in the column and then
//If the value is of type table get a list of all of the columns in the table
//Then get a distinct list of all of these column names
ColumnsToExpand = List.Distinct(List.Combine(List.Transform(ColumnContents,
each if _ is table then Table.ColumnNames(_) else {}))),
//Append the original column name to the front of each of these column names
NewColumnNames = List.Transform(ColumnsToExpand, each ColumnName & "." & _),
//Is there anything to expand in this column?
CanExpandCurrentColumn = List.Count(ColumnsToExpand)>0,
//If this column can be expanded, then expand it
ExpandedTable = if CanExpandCurrentColumn
then
Table.ExpandTableColumn(TableToExpand, ColumnName,
ColumnsToExpand, NewColumnNames)
else
TableToExpand,
//If the column has been expanded then keep the column number the same, otherwise add one to it
NextColumnNumber = if CanExpandCurrentColumn then ActualColumnNumber else ActualColumnNumber+1,
//If the column number is now greater than the number of columns in the table
//Then return the table as it is
//Else call the ExpandAll function recursively with the expanded table
OutputTable = if NextColumnNumber>(Table.ColumnCount(ExpandedTable)-1)
then
ExpandedTable
else
ExpandAll(ExpandedTable, NextColumnNumber)
in
OutputTable
in
Source
You can then use this function on the XML file shown above as follows:
let
//Load XML file
Source = Xml.Tables(File.Contents("C:\Users\Chris\Documents\PQ XML Expand All Demo.xml")),
ChangedType = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Source,{{"companyname", type text}}),
//Call the ExpandAll function to expand all columns
Output = ExpandAll(ChangedType)
in
Output
And bingo, in one step, you get everything:
You can download the sample workbook here.
