[SalesForce] Parsing ListViews columns from the Metadata API

I am trying to parse ListViews from the Metadata API to try to show the content I have locally.

The documentation I found explains some of the fields, but not in details.

For example take a simple ListView for the Contact object.

<listViews>
    <fullName>NewLastWeek</fullName>
    <columns>FULL_NAME</columns>
    <columns>ACCOUNT.NAME</columns>
    <columns>CONTACT.TITLE</columns>
    <columns>CONTACT.PHONE1</columns>
    <filterScope>Everything</filterScope>
    <filters>
        <field>CONTACT.CREATED_DATE</field>
        <operation>equals</operation>
        <value>LAST_WEEK</value>
    </filters>
    <label>New Last Week</label>
</listViews>

The columns that are given do not correspond to the fields in my Contact object. FULL_NAME and CONTACT.PHONE1 do not exist.

CONTACT.CREATED_DATE obviously corresponds to the CreatedDate field, but it does not use the same syntax.

Finally LAST_WEEK is not a real value, but a placeholder for a more complex query. For this one, I found a help page listing all the possible values.

Is there a documentation that could help me map the "missing" column names with the real ones?

Best Answer

From what Ive been able to gather the names that appear in the Metadata API for ListView columns are the backend Oracle DB names and there is no public API for translating them to the salesforce native names. Custom columns should come through with the appropriate names and if necessary the Oracle names can be manually mapped to the native names, unfortunate but the only solution I know of right now.

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] Parsing Metadata API XML

Metadata API Route. You can likely reuse the Java types generated by the WSDL and call utility methods provided by your Web Service stack your using to de-serialise the XML contents of the .profile into the generated Profile Java type.

I've done this the Salesforce WSC stack (using the static method 'load' on the generated types). The following is an example using the Retrieve for a Custom Object, but you should be able to adapt it easily for Profile. However read on to another thought I have about your requirement below...

// Retrieve Custom Object Meta data for Source Object
RetrieveRequest retrieveRequest = new RetrieveRequest();
retrieveRequest.setSinglePackage(true);
com.sforce.soap.metadata.Package packageManifest = new com.sforce.soap.metadata.Package();
ArrayList<PackageTypeMembers> types = new ArrayList<PackageTypeMembers>();
PackageTypeMembers packageTypeMember = new PackageTypeMembers();
packageTypeMember.setName("CustomObject");
packageTypeMember.setMembers(new String[] { sourceObject });
types.add(packageTypeMember);
packageManifest.setTypes((PackageTypeMembers[]) types.toArray(new PackageTypeMembers[] {}));
retrieveRequest.setUnpackaged(packageManifest);
AsyncResult response = metadataConnection.retrieve(retrieveRequest);
while(!response.isDone())
{
    Thread.sleep(1000);
    response = metadataConnection.checkStatus(new String[] { response.getId()} )[0];
}
RetrieveResult retrieveResult = metadataConnection.checkRetrieveStatus(response.getId());

// Parse Custom Object Meta Data for Source Object
CustomObject customObject = new CustomObject();
byte[] zipBytes = retrieveResult.getZipFile();
ZipInputStream zipis = new ZipInputStream(new ByteArrayInputStream(zipBytes, 0, zipBytes.length));
ZipEntry zipEntry = null;
while((zipEntry = zipis.getNextEntry()) != null)
{
    if(zipEntry.getName().endsWith(sourceObject + ".object"))
    {
        TypeMapper typeMapper = new TypeMapper();
        XmlInputStream xmlis = new XmlInputStream();
        xmlis.setInput(zipis, "UTF-8");
        customObject.load(xmlis, typeMapper);
        zipis.closeEntry();
        break;
    }
}

Reading Profiles Data via SOQL

One of the biggest problems with the Metadata API and Profiles, is that in order to get the complete information about your profiles you need to include in the manifest / request a list of all the classes, objects and pages you want to be included in the Profile returned. Fortunately what you can do instead is leverage the fact that Profile information is actually stored in the Permission Set tables, which you can query using the Salesforce Partner or REST API's.

For me this is the easier route to achieve what you want, what do you think?

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[SalesForce] How to query ListView records that were created by users

As another user, there is no way to query any ListView record where the person creating it selected "Visible only to me". As you already found, the Metadata API makes this clear, and there are no exceptions in other APIs either.

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