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Best way to modify an event property value for all past events?

  • 16 July 2021
  • 3 replies
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We have two apps on different platforms reporting different event properties.

Android: reports a number as an event property

iOS: reports a string which is the “Number Unit” and not just a number

Because of this, we can’t get a property sum for iOS.

We can fix our tracking code for future events, but we need to be able to fix our past events.

I didn’t see anyway to perform any string conversions of any sort, but how can we do this?

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Best answer by ning.chang 5 January 2022, 09:38

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Userlevel 7
Badge +10

Hey @artchang 
Afaik, once the data is ingested in Amplitude in a given datatype, it’s hard to change the underlying value.

Here’s a post for added context on datatypes- 

 

You are correct. There isn’t any string conversion feature that I’m aware of in the platform which could help in your case.  If you think this could be a valuable feature depending on your use case, you can submit your idea/requests in here .

 

Hope this helps!

 

Userlevel 5
Badge +3

There is an option in the Taxonomy API to update an event property (see Update an Event property: https://developers.amplitude.com/docs/taxonomy-api on this page), but I have never tried it myself and don’t know if it would even apply or do any good in your case.

There is a workaround if the number of different values your property may get is limited, i.e. ten or fewer. If that’s the case, you could create an Event Segmentation query where each value of the event property is set up as its own event (like this). Then you can use the custom formulas to calculate your sum. It’s not pretty, but it’ll help you in a pinch.

Userlevel 4
Badge +7

Hi @artchang! I am not sure if this is still relevant, but we rolled out a Transformations feature a while ago that will address this use case by renaming the property values: https://help.amplitude.com/hc/en-us/articles/360055910271-Transformations-retroactively-modify-your-event-data-structure 

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