Node Suggestion

[badger101]

Greetings! I’d like to suggest a Table Column to Variable Loop Start Node to be added.

At the moment, there is only Table Column to Variable Node.

I saw that its counterpart, which is the Table Row to Variable Node already has its own Loop Start Node version, so I don’t see why the Column can’t have its own Loop Start

[bruno29a]

Hi @badger101 , what would the expected behaviour be for a Table Column To Variable Loop be? And what would be the use case?

[Thyme]

This post is meant as Devil’s Advocate!

In the sense of “complete the pattern”, I agree it’s logical to add a Table Column To Variable Loop Start node. It would iterate over columns, using the RowIDs as names for the Flow Variables. This is where I see the added value diminish though:

• Tables generally have way more rows than columns, so this would create a lot of Flow Variables.
• RowIDs are generally of a generic pattern, such as RowXYZ, at least for me. That’s hard to work with ("was the population value stored in FV 'Row4' or 'Row7'?"). It’s could be an advantage for the scripting folks though, but that’s really advanced stuff.

A possible workaround would be to Transpose the input table, then use the existing Table Row To Variable Loop Start node. If all columns have the same data type, this should be no problem. If not, then you’d have to deal with changing Flow Variable types with your proposed node.

As Bruno already mentioned, can you argue your use case? Why does Transpose + Table Row To Variable Loop Start not work for you? We might not see what you’re seeing. How would the proposed node make your life easier? =)

[iCFO]

I could see how it could be a time saver if it had some cool column loop selection capabilities built into it. Like a column position pattern selector.