Determine sobject Type From Id Using SOAP API

Question

I'm using C# and would like to determine the type of an sObject based on it's id.

I would like to pass an id to my app and have it return a list of accounts related to it. I need to identify the sobject type of the id so I can create a proper soql query for it. (If it's an Invoice__c do one query, if it's a Crazy_Custom_Grandchild__c do another, etc...)

I tried a .search() api call like this:

FIND {'001800000116UUiAAM'} IN Id FIELDS RETURNING Contact(Id, Phone, FirstName, LastName), 
Lead(Id, Phone, FirstName, LastName), Account(Id, Phone, Name)

but received a malformed query error because of the id field.

I don't want to have to do a whole bunch of try ... catch calls, there has to be a better way...

Answer 1

best solution I've come up with so far is to use .describeGlobal() like this:

DescribeGlobalResult dgr = binding.describeGlobal();
DescribeGlobalSObjectResult dgsr = dgr.sobjects.FirstOrDefault(x =>
    string.IsNullOrEmpty(x.keyPrefix) ? false : id.StartsWith(x.keyPrefix));

    if (dgsr != null)
    {
        switch (dgsr.name)
        {
            case "custom1__c":
                ...
                break;
            case "custom2__c":
                ...
                break;
            case "custom3__c":
                ...
                break;
            default:
                ...
                break;
        }
    }

Answer 2

This approach is what I followed in Apex, I am not too sure how will it work in the SOAP API

1. Create a Map of Schema.getGlobalDescribe();
2. Now, key will be the first 3 letters of the ID and value will be sObject Name

Follow some Code:

//Suppose accId is a string which holds an Id    
String keyCode  = accId.subString(0,3);

//Create a Map
Map<String, Schema.SObjectType> gd = Schema.getGlobalDescribe();

//Iterate over all the Map Values
for(Schema.SObjectType objectInstance : gd.values()){
     if(objectInstance.getDescribe().getKeyPrefix() == keyCode){
      //do your processing with the API name what you want
      System.debug('Id is related to object: '+ objectInstance.getDescribe().getName());
     }
}

I hope this helps!

Answer 3

You can do this more efficiently now with the SOAP versions of the Tooling API via EntityDefinition. There is a KeyPrefix field you can search on to find the specific match.

E.g.

Select Id,QualifiedApiName,KeyPrefix from EntityDefinition where KeyPrefix = '001'    

Answer 4

WSC + JAVA The best solution

String recordId = '00163000009j310';
String prefix = recordId.substring(0, 3);

String sobjectType = null;
for (DescribeGlobalSObjectResult sobj : connection.describeGlobal().getSobjects()){
    if (sobj.getKeyPrefix() != null) {
        if (sobj.getKeyPrefix().equals(prefix)){
            sobjectType = sobj.getName();
        }
    }
}