topic Re: Editing value of widget parameter within notebook code in Community Articles

Editing value of widget parameter within notebook code

DavidOBrien — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 18:13:04 GMT

I have a notebook with a text widget where I want to be able to edit the value of the widget within the notebook and then reference it in SQL code. For example, assuming there is a text widget named Var1 that has input value "Hello", I would want to be able to do the following:

originalValue = dbutils.widgets.get('Var1')

dbutils.widgets.text('Var1', originalValue + ", World!")

%sql

select '${Var1}' -> returns 'Hello, World!'

However, whenever I try an approach like this in my notebooks, it does not update the value in Var1 and will select the original 'Hello' value. How can I fix this? Thank you

Re: Editing value of widget parameter within notebook code

Hkesharwani — Sun, 19 May 2024 03:30:46 GMT

Hi ,

The dbutils.widgets.text() function in Databricks takes three positional arguments. They are:

name: The programmatic name of the text widget.
defaultValue: The default value of the text widget.
label: An optional label for the text widget.
From the above code you are trying to pass a default value, and you are already passing a value to widget var1, that's why the code always returns 'Hello'.

I am not aware of a way to directly manipulate the value of widget, but the below code can help you to take the value from widget and then modify and use in the SQL.

# Get the parameters dbutils.widgets.text('param1',"Hello") #Default value as Hello param1 = dbutils.widgets.get("param1") # Printing value of param1 print(f"Parameter 1: {param1}") #manupualting the value using python param1=param1+' World!' print(param1) #defining spark varaiable with value of modified variable param1 spark.sql(f"set param1.var='{param1}'") -------------- %sql SELECT cast(${param1.var} as string)

Re: Editing value of widget parameter within notebook code

anardinelli — Tue, 21 May 2024 15:08:40 GMT

Hi @DavidOBrien, how are you?

You can try the following approach:

# Get the current value of the widget current_value = dbutils.widgets.get("widget_name") # Append the new value to the current value new_value = current_value + "appended_value" # Set the widget value with the updated string dbutils.widgets.text("widget_name", new_value)

Please note that this will work if the widget is a text widget. If the widget is of a different type, you might need to convert the values to the appropriate type before appending and setting the new value.

Let me know if it helps.

Best,

Alessandro

Re: Editing value of widget parameter within notebook code

gauthamg — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 16:37:03 GMT

The code you have shared will not work. You can try for yourself.

Re: Editing value of widget parameter within notebook code

help_needed_445 — Tue, 20 May 2025 14:18:21 GMT

I haven't been able to find a way to change the value of a widget except by removing it and re-creating.

originalValue = dbutils.widgets.get('Var1')

dbutils.widgets.remove('Var1')

dbutils.widgets.text('Var1', originalValue + ", World!")

Re: Editing value of widget parameter within notebook code

Ville_Leinonen — Wed, 28 May 2025 12:59:46 GMT

It seems that only way to use parameters in sql code block is to use dbutils.widget and you cannot change those parameters without removing widget and setting it up again in code

Re: Editing value of widget parameter within notebook code

GoToJDenman — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 14:49:47 GMT

I found I also have to do dbutils.widgets.remove('Var1') in one cell and dbutils.widgets.text('Var1', originalValue + ", World!") in the next cell or it remembers the old value when it sets the widget back up.