Need clarification on Trigger.new

Question

I have contact object and one of its field is Account which is in lookup relationship.

In one of contact trigger i have used

for(Contact con: Trigger.New)
{
       //code
}

If I try to print con.Account.name it is showing null even though account has name. what would be the cause.

Actually can we access like con.Account.name??

Regards, Gayathri

Answer 1

No in trigger.New you can't access parent object fields directly. You need to query them to access..

for example.

Set<Id> accId = new Set<Id>();
for(Contact con: Trigger.New)
{
       accId.add(con.accountId);
}
List<Account> accList = [select id, name from account WHERE Id IN: accId ]; //access name from this list

Answer 2

Alternatively, you can do the following:

List<Contact> lst_contacts = 
    [SELECT Id, Name, Account.Name
    FROM Contact
    WHERE Id IN :Trigger.new];

// Now access account field directly from the contacts
For (Contact myContact : lst_contacts) {
    System.debug('Account Name = ' + myContact.Account.Name);
}

But I personally prefer the first approach given by Tushar. In my experience, it is better to use collections rather than querying parent objects. But it is an option.