QlikView - Peek Function

The peek() function in QlikView is used to fetch the value of a field from a previous record and use it in calculations.

Input Data

Let us consider the monthly sales figure as shown below. Save the data with file name monthly_sales.csv.

Month,Sales Volume
March,2145
April,2458
May,1245
June,5124
July,7421
August,2584
September,5314
October,7846
November,6532
December,4625
January,8547
February,3265

Load Script

The above data is loaded to QlikView memory by using the script editor. Open the Script editor from the File menu or press Control+E. Choose the Table Files option from for the file containing the above data. Edit the load script to add the following code. Click OK and click Control+R to load the data into QlikView's memory.

LOAD Month, 
     [Sales Volume],
     peek('Sales Volume') as Prevmonth
FROM
[C:\Qlikview\data\monthly_sales.csv]
(txt, codepage is 1252, embedded labels, delimiter is ',', msq);

Creating Sheet Object

Let us create a Table Box sheet object to show the data generated by the above script. Go to the menu item Layout → New Sheet Object → Table Box. The following window appears in which we mention the Title of the table and select the required fields to be displayed. Clicking OK displays the data from the csv file in the QlikView Table Box as shown below. Also set the sort order as shown below to get the result in the same order of the field Month as it is in the source.

On completing the above steps and clicking Finish, we get the Table box showing the data as given below.

Using peek() Function in Calculations

The peek() can be used in calculations involving other columns. Let us display the percentage change for sales volume for each month. The following script achieves this result.

LOAD
Month, [Sales Volume],
peek('Sales Volume') as Prevvolume,
(([Sales Volume]-peek('Sales Volume')))/peek('Sales Volume')*100  as Difference
FROM
[C:\Qlikview\data\monthly_sales.csv]
(txt, codepage is 1252, embedded labels, delimiter is ',', msq); 

Creating Sheet Object

Let us create a Table Box sheet object to show the data generated by the above script. Go to the menu item Layout → New Sheet Object → Table Box. The following window appears in which we mention the Title of the table and select the required fields to be displayed. Clicking OK displays the data from the CSV file in the QlikView Table Box as shown below.