Describing the default Person Account record type using Apex

Question

Using the RecordTypeInfo class allows us to get information about the Record Types and which one is set to default for the running user's profile.

The (Person) Account is however a special case, because it is can have 2 defaults set for a profile: one in the same way as other objects (see top section of image 1) but also a specific default record type for both a regular Account as well as a Person Account.

With the following piece of code we can retrieve the default Record Type for the running user and also output the results in the debug log:

Map<Id, Schema.RecordTypeInfo> recordTypeInfoMap = Schema.Account.getSObjectType().getDescribe().getRecordTypeInfosById();
Id defaultRecordtypeId;

for (RecordTypeInfo recordTypeInfo : recordTypeInfoMap.values()) {
    System.debug(recordTypeInfo.getName() + ': ' + recordTypeInfo.isDefaultRecordTypeMapping());
    if (recordTypeInfo.isDefaultRecordTypeMapping()) {
        defaultRecordtypeId  = recordTypeInfo.getRecordTypeId();
    }
}

The result of this (based on the configuration shown in the image) would be a list like below:

[4]|DEBUG|Commercial Account: true
[4]|DEBUG|Domestic Account: false
... any other record type you have
[4]|DEBUG|Master: false

So using the isDefaultRecordTypeMapping() method from the RecordTypeInfo class only retrieves the default Account Record Type that is set for Account in general, regardless of whether it is a Person Account or not.

Question: Is there a way to also retrieve from the Schema that Domestic Account is set as the Person Account Default Record Type?

Answer 1

We ended up (re)using a Custom Setting to store the default Commercial and Person Account record types, see the code below.

When the sObject type of the record is Account, we use the 2 custom settings, if it is any other sObject type, we use the Record Type Describe to return the default record type for that object.

private static Id getDefaultRecordTypeId(SObject record) {
    Map<Id, Schema.RecordTypeInfo> recordTypeInfoMap = record.getSObjectType().getDescribe().getRecordTypeInfosById();

    // Account has 2 defaults, 1 for commercial and 1 for domestic, but only one can be retrieved as default by the schema describe so we do a custom settings trick here
    if (record.getSObjectType() == Schema.Account.getSObjectType()) {
        RecordTypeIds__c recordTypeIds = RecordTypeIds__c.getInstance();
        if ((Boolean) record.get('IsPersonAccount')) {
            return recordTypeIds.AccDomesticAccount18d__c;
        } else {
            return recordTypeIds.AccCommercialAccount18d__c;
        }
    }

    // All other objects have just 1 default record type, so we can simply return that one.
    for (RecordTypeInfo recordTypeInfo : recordTypeInfoMap.values()) {
        if (recordTypeInfo.isDefaultRecordTypeMapping()) {
            return recordTypeInfo.getRecordTypeId();
        }
    }
    return null;
}

PS. This code assumes that when the record is an account, the IsPrivateAccount field is also present, as there does not seem to be a way to use Describe information to determine whether it is a Person Account or not.