Bigquery add columns to table schema

Question

I am trying to add new column to BigQuery existing table. I have tried bq command tool and API approach. I get following error when making call to Tables.update().

Answer 1

Try this:

bq --format=prettyjson show yourdataset.yourtable > table.json

Edit table.json and remove everything except the inside of "fields" (e.g. keep the [ { "name": "x" ... }, ... ]). Then add your new field to the schema.

Or pipe through jq

bq --format=prettyjson show yourdataset.yourtable | jq .schema.fields > table.json

Then run:

bq update yourdataset.yourtable table.json

You can add --apilog=apilog.txt to the beginning of the command line which will show exactly what is sent / returned from the bigquery server.