Filter Table with Generalized Values

I have the following table say t =

Id Age Gender Country

-- ----- --------- ---------

1 10 M US

2 20 F CA

3 20 F US

4 10 M CA

5 10 M CA

I have another array say col_name with values { Age = 20, Gender = F }

Values of col_name change .. for example col_name = { Age = 10, Gender = M, Country = CA }

or col_name = { Age = 10 }

My goal is to write a genealized function such that when i pass col_name ( whatever be its value ) it should be able to get me a filtered set from t

Is there an function for t that can help me get the filtered result set if I passed col_name ?

ex = t.<some_filter_function>( col_name = { Age = 20, Gender = F } )

should give me

Id Age Gender Country

-- ----- --------- ---------

2 20 F CA

3 20 F US

Answer 1

[Geoff Hayes]

Neeraj - how about trying something like

filteredTable = t(t.Age == 20 & strcmp(t.Gender, 'F'), :)

or are you hoping for something a little more general?

[Neeraj Singh]

Hey Geoff, Thank you . I was hoping for a more general arrangement. In this solution you suggested, my Filtering_Function call to 't' would need to be aware that there is Age and Gender in the table "col_name".

If say for example the next loop of values for "col_name" = {Age: 10, Country: "CA"}, then the above solution would not work.

somehow it needs to be something like this -> t.Filter_Function( col_name )

so whatever value col_name gets Filter_Function should be able to parse through that

[Geoff Hayes]

Well you could create a function that might do this for you:

function [myTable] = filterTable(myTable, filterObj)

filterNames = fields(filterObj);
for k = 1:length(filterNames)
    filterName = filterNames{k};
    tableVariables = myTable.Properties.VariableNames; 
    if ismember(filterNames{k}, tableVariables)
        filterValue = getfield(filterObj, filterName);
        if ischar(filterValue)
            myTable = myTable(strcmp(myTable.(filterName),filterValue), :);
        elseif isnumeric(filterValue)
            myTable = myTable(myTable.(filterName) == filterValue, :);
        else
            fprintf('Unhandled filter for %s.\n', filterName);
            
        end
    end
end

And then you would create a filter object and call this function like

filterObj.Age = 20;
filterObj.Gender = 'F';
filteredTable = filterTable(t, filterObj);

[Neeraj Singh]

Thank you