Any way to retrieve the CreatedDate of a CustomField via Apex?

Question

I'm trying to do some field level data analysis and it would be helpful to be able to pull out the CreatedDate and CreatedBy (Name) for each Custom Field (not individual records) on both Standard and Custom Objects.

I've experimented a bit with the Tooling API to retrieve this but wondering if there's an easier way.

Answer 1

I figured it out by using the listMetadata method of the Metadata-API Apex wrapper provided by Financeforce.

https://github.com/financialforcedev/apex-mdapi

MetadataService.MetadataPort service = new MetadataService.MetadataPort();
service.SessionHeader = new MetadataService.SessionHeader_element();
service.SessionHeader.sessionId = UserInfo.getSessionId();

List<MetadataService.ListMetadataQuery> queries = new List<MetadataService.ListMetadataQuery>();    
MetadataService.ListMetadataQuery queryCustomField = new MetadataService.ListMetadataQuery();
queryCustomField.type_x = 'CustomField';
queries.add(queryCustomField);    
MetadataService.FileProperties[] fileProperties = service.listMetadata(queries, 25);

// Debug results
for(MetadataService.FileProperties fileProperty : fileProperties) {
  System.debug(fileProperty.fullName + ': createdby=' + fileProperty.createdByName + ', createddate=' + fileProperty.createdDate + ', manageableState=' + fileProperty.manageableState);
}