select-columns

Selects a list of columns from a datatable in a specified order.

Enables selection of a subset of columns from a datatable.

Defines the order of columns in the output.

Arguments

Inputs:

data: The datatable containing columns to be selected.

columns: The list of columns to be included, in the specified order.

Output:

data: A datatable with the selected columns, in the order defined in columns.

Example

To sort columns alphabetically, the Select-columns adaptor can be used in concert with Datatable-columns and Sort-list.

Original data:

Final data: (column names are sorted alphabetically)

Another option in this case is to sort the columns using Datatable-columns and Sort-list, but instead of feeding the results directly into the columns argument of Select-columns, copy-pasting from the Sort-list output, enabling you to easily sort a subset of columns alphabetically.

Possible use cases

• Selecting a subset of columns for final data-flo output

• Selecting one or more columns to send on a particular processing path through other adaptors

• Reordering columns to match an expected output order

• Reordering columns to get two columns next to each other for easy comparison during the data-flo build process