Limit a view to select between two date partitions - google-analytics

Question

I wish to define a view for Google Analytics landing pages. I've tried to set this up by saving the following query as a view:
SELECT
date,
fullVisitorId AS fv,
visitID AS v,
h.page.pagePath AS landing_page
FROM
`project-id.dataset.ga_sessions_*`, UNNEST(hits) AS h
WHERE
hitNumber = 1
In the queries that join to this view I plan to limit them to between two date partitions like so:
SELECT
sessions.date,
fullVisitorId AS fv,
visitId AS v,
landing_page
FROM `project-id.dataset.ga_sessions_*` AS sessions, UNNEST(hits) AS h
JOIN `project-id.dataset.landing_pages` AS landing_pages
ON landing_pages.fv = sessions.fullVisitorId
AND landing_pages.date = sessions.date
AND landing_pages.v = sessions.visitId
WHERE
_TABLE_SUFFIX BETWEEN '20170108' AND '20170108'
This still appears to select a large volume of data ~5GB rather than ~60MB that would be expected for one day.
How can I re-write the view so that it only selects the relevant date partitions as defined by the consuming query?

Answer 1

Make sure to include the _TABLE_SUFFIX in the view definition so that you can reference it in queries over the view. Here's an example that converts the _TABLE_SUFFIX to a date:
SELECT
date,
fullVisitorId AS fv,
visitID AS v,
h.page.pagePath AS landing_page,
PARSE_DATE('%Y%m%d', _TABLE_SUFFIX) AS sessions_date
FROM
`project-id.dataset.ga_sessions_*`, UNNEST(hits) AS h
WHERE
hitNumber = 1;
Now try a query over the view:
SELECT
COUNT(DISTINCT fullVisitorId) AS total_visitors
FROM `dataset.view_name`
WHERE sessions_date = '2017-01-08';