Documentation

Work with null types

The null type represents a missing or unknown value.

Type name: null

Null syntax

Null types exist in columns of other basic types. Flux does not provide a literal syntax for a null value, however, you can use debug.null() to return a null value of a specified type.

import "internal/debug"

// Return a null string
debug.null(type: "string")

// Return a null integer
debug.null(type: "int")

// Return a null boolean
debug.null(type: "bool")
  • Copy
  • Fill window

An empty string ("") is not a null value.

Check if a column value is null

In functions that iterate over rows (such as filter() or map()), use the exists logical operator to check if a column value is null.

Filter out rows with null values
data
    |> filter(fn: (r) => exists r._value)
  • Copy
  • Fill window
Given the following input data:
_time_value
2021-01-01T00:00:00Z1.2
2021-01-01T02:00:00Z
2021-01-01T03:00:00Z2.5
2021-01-01T04:00:00Z
The example above returns:
_time_value
2021-01-01T00:00:00Z1.2
2021-01-01T03:00:00Z2.5

Include null values in an ad hoc stream of tables

  1. Use array.from() to create an ad hoc stream of tables.
  2. Use debug.null() to include null column values.
import "array"
import "internal/debug"

array.from(
    rows: [
        {a: 1, b: 2, c: 3, d: "four"},
        {a: debug.null(type: "int"), b: 5, c: 6, d: debug.null(type: "string")}
    ]
)
  • Copy
  • Fill window
The example above returns:
abcd
123four
56

Was this page helpful?

Thank you for your feedback!


The future of Flux

Flux is going into maintenance mode. You can continue using it as you currently are without any changes to your code.

Read more

InfluxDB 3 Core and Enterprise are now in Beta

InfluxDB 3 Core and Enterprise are now available for beta testing, available under MIT or Apache 2 license.

InfluxDB 3 Core is a high-speed, recent-data engine that collects and processes data in real-time, while persisting it to local disk or object storage. InfluxDB 3 Enterprise is a commercial product that builds on Core’s foundation, adding high availability, read replicas, enhanced security, and data compaction for faster queries. A free tier of InfluxDB 3 Enterprise will also be available for at-home, non-commercial use for hobbyists to get the full historical time series database set of capabilities.

For more information, check out: