Apex trigger to create contact from email-to-case if the email is not yet in our system

Question

I am trying to create an Apex trigger that will create a contact using the SuppliedEmail field of a case to avoid situations where we have a case that is not tied to an account (we will need all cases to be tied to accounts in order to implement SLAs via Entitlements). I found this answer: https://developer.salesforce.com/forums/?id=906F00000009CSkIAM however I would really like to understand what is wrong with what I am doing as I will need to develop further features and it feels like I'm just not getting something very important about the whole system.

Here is my code:

trigger new_case_handling on Case (before insert) {
    System.debug('Entered execution procedure for new_case_handling trigger');
    for (Case receivedCase: Trigger.new) {
        Boolean contactCreated = false;
        if(receivedCase.AccountId == null && receivedCase.SuppliedEmail != null) {
            List<Account> unknownAccount = [SELECT Id FROM Account  WHERE Name = 'UNKNOWN ACCOUNT'];

            if(unknownAccount.size() != 0) {
                String fullEmail = String.valueOf(receivedCase.SuppliedEmail);
                String newUsername = 'NOTAVAILABLE';
                if(fullEmail.indexOf('@') != -1) {
                    newUsername = fullEmail.split('@').get(0);
                }
                Contact newContact = new Contact(
                    LastName = newUsername,
                    Email = receivedCase.SuppliedEmail,
                    AccountId = unknownAccount[0].Id);

                insert newContact;
                contactCreated = true;
                System.debug('Created contact ' + String.valueOf(receivedCase.SuppliedEmail) + ' on account ' + unknownAccount[0].Id );
            }
            else {
                System.debug('Unable to find UNKNOWN ACCOUNT to insert ' + String.valueOf(receivedCase.SuppliedEmail) + 'in' );
            }
            if(contactCreated) {
                List<Contact> createdContact = [SELECT Id FROM contact WHERE Email =:receivedCase.SuppliedEmail];
                if(createdContact.size() > 0){
                    receivedCase.contactId = createdContact[0].Id;
                    insert receivedCase;
                }
                else {
                    System.debug('Contact was created but query failed.');
                }
            }

        }
    }
}

When I set the trigger condition to before update and try to modify a case that came from an unregistered email address, it seems to work out totally fine -- it creates the contact on the UNKNOWN ACCOUNT account and assigns it to the ticket. However before insert doesn't seem to work at all, I am not able to see any logs in the Developer Console (although I am perhaps not looking for them properly), and the case does not end up being created at all(!). Can you guys please guide me toward what I am missing?

Answer 1

In hindsight, this question is fairly dumb and I've figured out the problem. In a trigger that is set to before insert I was calling insert on the triggering item after having added the contact to the case. That seems like something that shouldn't work, and simply commenting out that line allows the code to function.