Skip to main content

Map(K, V)

Data type Map(K, V) stores key-value pairs.

Unlike other databases, maps are not unique in ClickHouse, i.e. a map can contain two elements with the same key. (The reason for that is that maps are internally implemented as Array(Tuple(K, V)).)

You can use use syntax m[k] to obtain the value for key k in map m. Also, m[k] scans the map, i.e. the runtime of the operation is linear in the size of the map.

Parameters

  • K — The type of the Map keys. Arbitrary type except Nullable and LowCardinality nested with Nullable types.
  • V — The type of the Map values. Arbitrary type.

Examples

Create a table with a column of type map:

CREATE TABLE tab (m Map(String, UInt64)) ENGINE=Memory;
INSERT INTO tab VALUES ({'key1':1, 'key2':10}), ({'key1':2,'key2':20}), ({'key1':3,'key2':30});

To select key2 values:

SELECT m['key2'] FROM tab;

Result:

┌─arrayElement(m, 'key2')─┐
│                      10 │
│                      20 │
│                      30 │
└─────────────────────────┘

If the requested key k is not contained in the map, m[k] returns the value type's default value, e.g. 0 for integer types and '' for string types. To check whether a key exists in a map, you can use function mapContains.

CREATE TABLE tab (m Map(String, UInt64)) ENGINE=Memory;
INSERT INTO tab VALUES ({'key1':100}), ({});
SELECT m['key1'] FROM tab;

Result:

┌─arrayElement(m, 'key1')─┐
│                     100 │
│                       0 │
└─────────────────────────┘

Converting Tuple to Map​

Values of type Tuple() can be casted to values of type Map() using function CAST:

Example

Query:

SELECT CAST(([1, 2, 3], ['Ready', 'Steady', 'Go']), 'Map(UInt8, String)') AS map;

Result:

┌─map───────────────────────────┐
│ {1:'Ready',2:'Steady',3:'Go'} │
└───────────────────────────────┘

Reading subcolumns of Map​

To avoid reading the entire map, you can use subcolumns keys and values in some cases.

Example

Query:

CREATE TABLE tab (m Map(String, UInt64)) ENGINE = Memory;
INSERT INTO tab VALUES (map('key1', 1, 'key2', 2, 'key3', 3));

SELECT m.keys FROM tab; --   same as mapKeys(m)
SELECT m.values FROM tab; -- same as mapValues(m)

Result:

┌─m.keys─────────────────┐
│ ['key1','key2','key3'] │
└────────────────────────┘

┌─m.values─┐
│ [1,2,3]  │
└──────────┘

See Also

Related content​