Is it possible to add a new field to an existing field of RECORD type in bigquery from UI?

Question

Is it possible to add a new field to an existing field of RECORD type in bigquery? So for example if my current schema is :

{u'fields': [{u'mode': u'NULLABLE', u'name': u'test1', u'type': u'STRING'},
             {u'fields': [{u'mode': u'NULLABLE',
                           u'name': u'field1',
                           u'type': u'STRING'}],
              u'mode': u'NULLABLE',
              u'name': u'recordtest',
              u'type': u'RECORD'}]}

Can I change it to add field "field2" to recordtest? So the new schema will look like:

{u'fields': [{u'mode': u'NULLABLE', u'name': u'test1', u'type': u'STRING'},
             {u'fields': [{u'mode': u'NULLABLE',
                           u'name': u'field1',
                           u'type': u'STRING'},
                          {u'mode': u'NULLABLE',
                           u'name': u'field2',
                           u'type': u'STRING'}],
              u'mode': u'NULLABLE',
              u'name': u'recordtest',
              u'type': u'RECORD'}]}

I couldn't find a way to do this from the UI. But I was able to do this using the API.

Answer 1

You can also use the bigquery CLI tool which comes as part of the gcloud command line tool. I found this route easier because there is less information to add to the request. You don't need an access token or API key since your session is already established. You can find everything you need to know here but the basics of it is:

bq show \ --schema \ --format=prettyjson \ YOUR_PROJECT_ID:YOUR_DATASET.YOUR_TABLE_NAME > schema_file.json Then modify the schema file to add the new nested field.

Then run: bq update YOUR_PROJECT_ID:YOUR_DATASET.YOUR_TABLE_NAME schema_file.json