Comparing IDs - use String or don't use Strings

Question

I have some logic where I need to iterate thru a bunch of Opportunities. I need to be able to determine when I hit a new Opportunity Owner ID.

I try:

String lastownerId = '';

for (Opportunity opportunity: opportunities) {
    if(opportunity.OwnerId == (lastownerId)) {
        ...
        ...

I get: System.StringException: Invalid id:

any tips?

Answer 1

Salesforce has an ID-type, so you could use Id lastownerId = null; instead. This has the big advantage of being 15/18 character id insensitive in comparison, using string type may get you false negatives depending on what the input-id's look like.

Right now, you're apparently comparing some non-id string with an id. You will definitely get the error you see if you compare for example "apples" with an actual id, right now you're comparing it to an empty string which is also an invalid id. Comparing a valid id to null will not generate an error and result in False being returned as you might expect.

Answer 2

Here you are comparing ID data type(opportunity.OwnerId) with String data type(lastownerId) value thats why you are getting this error.

There are 2 possible solutions -

1) either change lastownerId data type to Id like - 
       Id lastownerId = null;

2) OR convert opportunity.OwnerId to string first then compare;

Answer 3

You can't convert an empty String to an Id so the if-condition fails on first execution. Try changing the variable declaration to

Id lastOwnerId = null;