How can I set an SObject field to null using Java API?

Question

I have a third party service which updates custom object values in my service on Force.com platform using Java API and OAUTH2.

From some reason when I try to update the SObject field value to null, it ignores my request and keeps the old value. If I update it to a non-null value it does so successfully.

Here is the code:

         SObject quizTemplateSObject = new SObject();
         ...
         ...
        quizTemplateSObject.setField("skills__notifyList__c",null);     
        results = connection.update(new SObject[] { quizTemplateSObject });

Appreciate your thoughts.

Answer 1

Salesforce has a "fieldsToNull" array in its update API as described in the update documentation. Exactly how this is exposed depends on the tools used to generate the Java code from the WSDL but it is likely to be something like:

quizTemplateSObject.setFieldsToNull(
        new String[] {"skills__notifyList__c"}
        );