How can I update Owner.Name?

Question

I have the following code

accountToUpdate = [select owner.name from Account where owner.name = :sGetOwnerOne];
accountToUpdate.owner.name = sGetOwnerTwo;
update accountToUpdate;

How can I update owner names? Compiler showed me the following error:

Field is not writeable: User.Name

I tried this:

Account a1 = [select owner.name from Account where owner.name = :sGetOwnerOne];
        a1.Owner.name  = sGetOwnerTwo;
        update a1;

But it didn't work

Answer 1

Account src = [SELECT Owner.Id FROM Account where Name = 'SOURCE COMPANY'];
Account dest = [SELECT Id, Owner.Id FROM Account where Name = 'DEST COMPANY'];
dest.OwnerId = src.OwnerId;
update dest;

Note that the 'Id' field in the dest SOQL query is key because Salesforce needs it to update that specific record.

Just try to replace company names with yours and you will see it happening.

I'm not sure what you have in mind but I would have done that using a list based on User objects instead of Accounts.

Also, your first SOQL statement can result in more than 1 records because you can have many accounts with a given owner.

Answer 2

If you want to change the Owner you can only do it by setting the OwnerId field. If you want to set it based on Name, you will need to query for the User record whose Id you wish to set.

List<User> candidates = [SELECT Id FROM User WHERE Name = :someName LIMIT 1];
if (!candidates.isEmpty()) someAccount.OwnerId = candidates[0].Id;

If I were building a selectList in a controller for this purpose, I would do as @sfdcfox recommends and map Id to Name.

public Id newOwnerId { get; set; }
public List<SelectOption> owners
{
    get
    {
        if (owners == null)
        {
            owners = new List<SelectOption>();
            for (AggregateResult aggregate : [
                SELECT OwnerId, Owner.Name FROM Account GROUP BY OwnerId, Owner.Name
            ]){
                SelectOption owner = new SelectOption(
                    aggregate.get('OwnerId'), aggregate.get('Owner.Name')
                );
                owners.add(owner);
            }
        }
    }
    private set;
}

Then in your markup:

<apex:selectList value="{!newOwnerId}">
    <apex:selectOptions value="{!owners}" />
</apex:selectList>

Note that you would need to set someAccount.OwnerId = newOwnerId to use the above approach.

Answer 3

The problem is that you're trying to assign by name. Assuming you're building your select list from some sort of query, you should be able to do this:

SelectOption[] userOptions = new SelectOption[0];
for(User u:[SELECT Id, Name FROM User]) {
    userOptions.add(new SelectOption(u.Id, u.Name));
}
return userOptions;

This way, when the user selects a value, and it's assigned to sGetOwnerTwo, you'll have the user's Id value, which is how records are physically linked to each other. After that, you can then update your account's OwnerId value:

accountToUpdate.ownerId = sGetOwnerTwo;
update accountToUpdate;

Please note that if you're intending to query records, you should always try to query by ID values when possible. This gives better performance and ultimately makes sure you're selecting the right records (in case there's two John Does that work at your organization, you'll get the right John Doe).