Using case / if statements to create pivot columns is one way to do this. But it becomes very annoying if the number of pivot columns starts to increase. To deal with this, I created a Python module using the Python pandas that automatically generates an SQL query that can then be run in BigQuery. Here is a small introduction to this:
https://yashuseth.blog/2018/06/06/how-to-pivot-large-tables-in-bigquery
Relevant github code in case github is disabled:
import re import pandas as pd class BqPivot(): """ Class to generate a SQL query which creates pivoted tables in BigQuery. Example ------- The following example uses the kaggle titanic data. It can be found here - 'https://www.kaggle.com/c/titanic/data' This data is only 60 KB and it has been used for a demonstration purpose. This module comes particularly handy with huge datasets for which we would need BigQuery(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BigQuery). >>> from bq_pivot import BqPivot >>> import pandas as pd >>> data = pd.read_csv("titanic.csv").head() >>> gen = BqPivot(data=data, index_col=["Pclass", "Survived", "PassengenId"], pivot_col="Name", values_col="Age", add_col_nm_suffix=False) >>> print(gen.generate_query()) select Pclass, Survived, PassengenId, sum(case when Name = "Braund, Mr. Owen Harris" then Age else 0 end) as braund_mr_owen_harris, sum(case when Name = "Cumings, Mrs. John Bradley (Florence Briggs Thayer)" then Age else 0 end) as cumings_mrs_john_bradley_florence_briggs_thayer, sum(case when Name = "Heikkinen, Miss. Laina" then Age else 0 end) as heikkinen_miss_laina, sum(case when Name = "Futrelle, Mrs. Jacques Heath (Lily May Peel)" then Age else 0 end) as futrelle_mrs_jacques_heath_lily_may_peel, sum(case when Name = "Allen, Mr. William Henry" then Age else 0 end) as allen_mr_william_henry from <--insert-table-name-here--> group by 1,2,3 """ def __init__(self, data, index_col, pivot_col, values_col, agg_fun="sum", table_name=None, not_eq_default="0", add_col_nm_suffix=True, custom_agg_fun=None, prefix=None, suffix=None): """ Parameters ---------- data: pandas.core.frame.DataFrame or string The input data can either be a pandas dataframe or a string path to the pandas data frame. The only requirement of this data is that it must have the column on which the pivot it to be done. index_col: list The names of the index columns in the query (the columns on which the group by needs to be performed) pivot_col: string The name of the column on which the pivot needs to be done. values_col: string The name of the column on which aggregation needs to be performed. agg_fun: string The name of the sql aggregation function. table_name: string The name of the table in the query. not_eq_default: numeric, optional The value to take when the case when statement is not satisfied. For example, if one is doing a sum aggregation on the value column then the not_eq_default should be equal to 0. Because the case statement part of the sql query would look like - ... ... sum(case when <pivot_col> = <some_pivot_col_value> then values_col else 0) ... ... Similarly if the aggregation function is min then the not_eq_default should be positive infinity. add_col_nm_suffix: boolean, optional If True, then the original values column name will be added as suffix in the new pivoted columns. custom_agg_fun: string, optional Can be used if one wants to give customized aggregation function. The values col name should be replaced with {}. For example, if we want an aggregation function like - sum(coalesce(values_col, 0)) then the custom_agg_fun argument would be - sum(coalesce({}, 0)). If provided this would override the agg_fun argument. prefix: string, optional A fixed string to add as a prefix in the pivoted column names separated by an underscore. suffix: string, optional A fixed string to add as a suffix in the pivoted column names separated by an underscore. """ self.query = "" self.index_col = list(index_col) self.values_col = values_col self.pivot_col = pivot_col self.not_eq_default = not_eq_default self.table_name = self._get_table_name(table_name) self.piv_col_vals = self._get_piv_col_vals(data) self.piv_col_names = self._create_piv_col_names(add_col_nm_suffix, prefix, suffix) self.function = custom_agg_fun if custom_agg_fun else agg_fun + "({})" def _get_table_name(self, table_name): """ Returns the table name or a placeholder if the table name is not provided. """ return table_name if table_name else "<--insert-table-name-here-->" def _get_piv_col_vals(self, data): """ Gets all the unique values of the pivot column. """ if isinstance(data, pd.DataFrame): self.data = data elif isinstance(data, str): self.data = pd.read_csv(data) else: raise ValueError("Provided data must be a pandas dataframe or a csv file path.") if self.pivot_col not in self.data.columns: raise ValueError("The provided data must have the column on which pivot is to be done. "\ "Also make sure that the column name in the data is same as the name "\ "provided to the pivot_col parameter.") return self.data[self.pivot_col].astype(str).unique().tolist() def _clean_col_name(self, col_name): """ The pivot column values can have arbitrary strings but in order to convert them to column names some cleaning is required. This method takes a string as input and returns a clean column name. """ # replace spaces with underscores # remove non alpha numeric characters other than underscores # replace multiple consecutive underscores with one underscore # make all characters lower case # remove trailing underscores return re.sub("_+", "_", re.sub('[^0-9a-zA-Z_]+', '', re.sub(" ", "_", col_name))).lower().rstrip("_") def _create_piv_col_names(self, add_col_nm_suffix, prefix, suffix): """ The method created a list of pivot column names of the new pivoted table. """ prefix = prefix + "_" if prefix else "" suffix = "_" + suffix if suffix else "" if add_col_nm_suffix: piv_col_names = ["{0}{1}_{2}{3}".format(prefix, self._clean_col_name(piv_col_val), self.values_col.lower(), suffix) for piv_col_val in self.piv_col_vals] else: piv_col_names = ["{0}{1}{2}".format(prefix, self._clean_col_name(piv_col_val), suffix) for piv_col_val in self.piv_col_vals] return piv_col_names def _add_select_statement(self): """ Adds the select statement part of the query. """ query = "select " + "".join([index_col + ", " for index_col in self.index_col]) + "\n" return query def _add_case_statement(self): """ Adds the case statement part of the query. """ case_query = self.function.format("case when {0} = \"{1}\" then {2} else {3} end") + " as {4},\n" query = "".join([case_query.format(self.pivot_col, piv_col_val, self.values_col, self.not_eq_default, piv_col_name) for piv_col_val, piv_col_name in zip(self.piv_col_vals, self.piv_col_names)]) query = query[:-2] + "\n" return query def _add_from_statement(self): """ Adds the from statement part of the query. """ query = "from {0}\n".format(self.table_name) return query def _add_group_by_statement(self): """ Adds the group by part of the query. """ query = "group by " + "".join(["{0},".format(x) for x in range(1, len(self.index_col) + 1)]) return query[:-1] def generate_query(self): """ Returns the query to create the pivoted table. """ self.query = self._add_select_statement() +\ self._add_case_statement() +\ self._add_from_statement() +\ self._add_group_by_statement() return self.query def write_query(self, output_file): """ Writes the query to a text file. """ text_file = open(output_file, "w") text_file.write(self.generate_query()) text_file.close()