Restoring Deleted Dashboards with LookerSDK

Restoring deleted dashboards in Looker can sometimes feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack. With the Looker UI only displaying 30 dashboards at a time in the trash folder, imagine me a few weeks ago, desperately scrolling through the trash folder, trying to find dashboard number 2383. It was like a badly designed scavenger hunt, brought by an early morning request via Slack. As I scrolled senselessly, I spotted another message sliding into my peripheral vision. The subject read:

‘Please recover “Policy Actuarial Analysis by Claims Year Dashboard” dashboard’

Another one? After a quick check on the ‘last deleted’ field, it became apparent that nothing had been removed beyond the four-month mark. Now I am tasked to find two dashboards among 6K, scrolling at 30 dashboards at a time. Absolutely not! Looker SDK is here to help.

Here’s the complete Python script, that allows users to restore deleted dashboards using only the Dashboard ID.

import looker_sdk
from looker_sdk import models

# Initialize the SDK
sdk = looker_sdk.init40("looker.ini")

def restore_dashboard_from_trash(dashboard_id: str) -> models.Dashboard:
    try:
        # Find the dashboard by ID
        dashboard = sdk.dashboard(dashboard_id)

        # Check if the dashboard is in the trash
        if dashboard.deleted:
            # Restore the dashboard
            sdk.update_dashboard(dashboard.id, models.WriteDashboard(deleted=False))
            print(f"Dashboard {dashboard.id} restored.")
            return dashboard
        else:
            print(f"Dashboard with ID {dashboard_id} is not in trash.")

    except Exception:
        print(f"Dashboard with ID {dashboard_id} not found.")
    
    return None

# Run restore_dashboard_from_trash
dashboard_id = "2383"
restored_dashboard = restore_dashboard_from_trash(dashboard_id)

Let me break down the restore_dashboard_from_trash function step by step:

1. Finding the dashboard by ID: I first start by calling the sdk.dashboard(dashboard_id) method to retrieve the dashboard object based on thedashboard_id. If the dashboard exists, it will be returned as a Dashboard object; otherwise, an exception is raised.

dashboard = sdk.dashboard(dashboard_id)

2. Checking if the dashboard is in the trash: If the dashboard object is retrieved successfully, I check if its deleted attribute is set to True. This indicates that the dashboard is in the trash. I did try to search dashboards in the trash by using dashboard_id but this method returned results much more quickly.

if dashboard.deleted:

3. Restoring the dashboard: If the dashboard is in the trash, I call the sdk.update_dashboard() method with the dashboard.id and a WriteDashboard object that has its deleted attribute set to False. This restores the dashboard back to its last folder.

sdk.update_dashboard(dashboard.id, models.WriteDashboard(deleted=False))

4. Handling exceptions and different scenarios: I used the good old try-except block to handle exceptions and different scenarios:

a. If the dashboard is not in the trash, print a message indicating that it’s not deleted.

else:
    print(f"Dashboard with ID {dashboard_id} is not in trash.")

b. If the dashboard ID does not exist in Looker, an exception is raised. Catch the exception using a general Exception class and print a message notifying the user that the dashboard was not found.

except Exception:
    print(f"Dashboard with ID {dashboard_id} not found.")

5. Return value: If the dashboard is restored successfully, return the Dashboard object; otherwise, return None.

return None

Run restore_dashboard_from_trash to restore dashboard 2383.

dashboard_id = "2383"
restored_dashboard = restore_dashboard_from_trash(dashboard_id)

Restore Looker dashboards with LookerSDK

Hope you find this Python function makes restoring deleted dashboards in Looker a breeze. By using the Looker SDK, you can automate many of the mundane tasks saving hours of work.