[SalesForce] Add a custom field to multiple objects

I am working on an assignment to populate the data in a developer
sandbox with production data. This activity involves me in populating
data for over 50 objects. I am planning to create an external Id field
on all objects to store the Id of the records created (A common
approach to populate data in sandbox). So, I need to add a custom
external id field as Production_Id__c on all objects. Is there a way
to add this custom field to multiple objects programmatically, using
Ant or something else?

EDIT:== I finally ended up manually adding the external Id fields to
each objects. Tried the following.

Installed Bulk Object Field Creator App from Salesforce Appexchange
and it worked fine for 10 objects. It appears that the free version is
limited only for 10 objects.
Tried the Ultra Schema Builder App from Salesforce Appexchange and
it did not work as expected. Had it worked fine, my job would have
been much easier.
Tried Ant Deploy – Got a message saying tools.jar not found as I
only had JRE. I do not have admin rights on my work laptop and hence
had to try with the portable JDK. The ANT issue regarding the
tools.jar is resolved. However, trying to deploy with ANT threw the
error message "Userid/Password is invalid or locked out". I am behind
a proxy and my password has special characters ($). Tried escaping the
$ sign with \$, \$ and also %24 and none of these work (with or
without security token). Then logged into Salesforce org, found the
Session Id with the statement UserInfo.getSessionId() and changed the
build.properties to use the SessionId instead of username and password
and then got the error message "Failed to send request to Salesforce".

After trying so many options, I finally ended up adding the external
id fields manually to all objects. It was time consuming, but I spent
more than this time doing the research.

Best Answer

Assuming all the objects are already created, you could create a file that simply contains the one field definition you need, copy it, and deploy it. I'd say this task is probably easiest with Ant, but you could conceivably do it in an IDE as well.

First, set up your package.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Package xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
    <types>
        <members>*</members>
        <name>CustomObject</name>
    </types>
    <version>38.0</version>
</Package>

And in your objects folder, create a CustomObject__c.object file with the following contents (adjust to suit your own needs):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<CustomObject xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
<fields>
        <fullName>Comments__c</fullName>
        <description>Add your comments about this object here</description>
        <inlineHelpText>This field contains help text for this object</inlineHelpText>
        <label>Comments</label>
        <length>32000</length>
        <type>LongTextArea</type>
        <visibleLines>30</visibleLines>
</fields>
</CustomObject>

Next, just copy the file over and over again:

$ cp CustomObject__c.object CustomObject2__c.object
$ cp CustomObject__c.object CustomObject3__c.object
  ... as many more as you need

Finally, do your deployment:

ant deploy

Here's a pre-configured repo that you can use to get started.

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] How to use External Ids in a Before Insert trigger

Old code contained a few errors. Here is the Trigger, and test code. This passed the apex test method in my org.

Apex Trigger
trigger surveyTrigger on Survey__c (before insert) { if(Trigger.isBefore){ if(Trigger.isInsert){ Map<String, String> extMap = new Map<String, String>(); Set<String> extIdSet = new Set<String>(); for(Survey__c survey : Trigger.new){ extIdSet.add(survey.Account_Key__c); } for(Account a : [select Id, Foreign_Key__c from Account where Foreign_Key__c IN :extIdSet]){ extMap.put(a.Foreign_Key__c, a.Id); } for(Survey__c survey : Trigger.new){ survey.Account__c = extMap.get(survey.Account_Key__c); } } } }

Test class @isTest private class TestSurveyTrigger { static testMethod void myUnitTest() { Account testAccount = new Account(Name='My test account', Foreign_Key__c='test123'); insert testAccount; Test.startTest(); Survey__c testSurvey = new Survey__c(Account_Key__c='test123'); insert testSurvey; Test.stopTest(); Survey__c result = [select Id, Account__c, Account__r.Name, Account__r.Foreign_Key__c from Survey__c where Account_Key__c = 'test123' limit 1]; system.assertEquals(testAccount.Id, result.Account__c); } }

[SalesForce] Ant – How to deploy a custom field on an “installed app”

If you are deploying a CustomField onto an object provided by another managed package, you cannot include the CustomObject in your package.xml and you need instead list the CustomField in the package.xml. If you change your package.xml to this it should work:

<types>
   <members>APXTConga4__Conga_Template__c.Template_Call_Method__c</members.
   <name>CustomField</name>
</types>

We do something similar in one of our packages which extends another managed package. You can see the object definition and the full package.xml file at the links below. The package.xml lists the CustomField but does not list the npo02__Household__c CustomObject.

https://github.com/SalesforceFoundation/Cumulus/blob/dev/src/objects/npo02__Household__c.object https://github.com/SalesforceFoundation/Cumulus/blob/dev/src/package.xml

Note that we use a very explicit package.xml with no wildcards so I'm not sure if your wildcard for CustomObject will include the APXTConga4__Conga_Template__c CustomObject or not. If you get the same error, you might have to explicitly list out your CustomObjects and exclude the Conga object from the members.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] How to use External Ids in a Before Insert trigger

[SalesForce] Ant – How to deploy a custom field on an “installed app”

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