Check Update permissions on object instance/record

Question

Is it possible to check if I (current SF user) can update a given object instance?

We can use Schema.sObjectType.Contact.isUpdatable() to check if the current user has permissions to update Contact objects in general (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

However, it's possible that we might come across another Contact instance (EDIT: i.e a record) which we can not update because it's owned by someone else.

My question is, can I check if a particular standard object instance (EDIT: i.e a record) is updatable instead of checking on the class in general?

Answer 1

You can query the UserRecordAccess table (documentation is here) to find out what permissions a particular user has on a particular record of an object. This table allows you to construct the following query:

SELECT RecordId, HasEditAccess
FROM UserRecordAccess
WHERE UserId = :UserInfo.getUserId()
AND RecordId = <<record Id>> 

Answer 2

You can also build a custom sharing button for each object to help make UserRecordAccess accessible in a non-programmatic way. Check out the custom sharing button blog post on salesforcehacker - http://www.salesforcehacker.com/2013/09/build-your-own-custom-sharing-button.html.