[SalesForce] Why Account.Name has dot (.) and AccountId without dot(.)notation

I think my question title says all, but still let me explain.
When I was (SOQL) querying on Account object, I came across Account.Name which has dot (.) and AccountId without dot(.)notation. I was trying to give it a logic behind it.
My logic:
when account object was created, system(or Database) would auto generate the id for each record/object, so it wouldn't need Id. Hence we can directly call it as AccountID.
Well the question is, system also generates CreatedBy. In that case, I should be able to use AccountCreatedBy, Which clearly didn't work for me.

I'm so in love with this community. Thanks A Ton.

Best Answer

When you do a SOQL always the relationships are denoted by __r for custom objects while for standard objects its object Name usually.

If you are moving from Child to Parent or from parent to child in soql then field relationship Name comes into picture.

Now lets say we have query on contact as below,

[Select Id,AccountId,Account.Name from Contact]

Here AccountId is direct lookup field from contact to Account while to extract more information from related Account we go for Child relationship notation like Account.Name ,Account.CreatedBy

Another way to obtain AccountId will be as below

[Select Account.Id ,Account.Name from Contact]

Here we go from reference field Account to get its ID instead of using direct field.

Using Developer console and eclipse for queries will help you understand more . InShort AccountID is direct field referenced while Account.Name is how we traverse relationship

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] Unable to access AccountId on Task without first querying it

In task AccountId is filled from salesforce end

So when we insert the task

Task testTask = new Task(
                            WhatId= testAccount.Id,     
                            OwnerId=someUser.Id,
                            Subject='Call',
                            ActivityDate=System.today(),
                            Priority='Normal'
                            );

insert testTask;

testTask this will contain only those field which above mentioned and Id after DML operation.

Since task AccountId is filled from salesforce end. You need to query inorder to get this value

[SalesForce] Apex regex to validate the Salesforce dot notation

"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems."

-Jamie Zawinski

Regular expressions do have their uses, but I find myself trying to avoid using regex if I can.

I think there's a better solution in your case.

Using Apex, you can pull the fields from an object (any sObject).

Map<String, Schema.SObjectField> M = Schema.SObjectType.Account.fields.getMap();

Using this approach, you can do something that your regex will never be able to, you can verify that the given field name is actually a field on your target object. Given the line of code above, and assuming you have a variable called fieldName...

if(!M.keySet().containsKey(fieldName)){
    // add an error to be displayed on your Visualforce page here
}

It gets a bit more involved if you want to do this for related fields, but using String.split('.'), Schema.getGlobalDescribe(), and Schema.DescribeFieldResult.getReferenceTo(), would accomplish what you're looking to do here.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] Unable to access AccountId on Task without first querying it

[SalesForce] Apex regex to validate the Salesforce dot notation

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