Object Reference for the Salesforce Platform
jNote: This release is in preview. Features described here don’t become generally available until the latest general availability date that Salesforce announces for this release. Before then, and where features are noted as beta, pilot, or developer preview, we can’t guarantee general availability within any particular time frame or at all. Make your purchase decisions only on the basis of generally available products and features.
Required Fields
Required fields must have a non-null value. This rule affects the create and update calls:
- In a create call, the system automatically populates the data for certain required fields (such as system fields and the object ID fields). Similarly, if a required field has a default value (its defaultedOnCreate attribute is set to true, then the system implicitly assigns a value for this field when the object is created, even if a value for this field is not explicitly passed in on the create call. For all other required fields, such as ID fields that are analogous to foreign keys in SQL, a client application must explicitly assign a value when the object is created (it cannot be null).
- In updates, a required field cannot be set to null, and many required fields can’t be changed.
Any field not specified as required in the object description is optional, that is, it can be null when updated or created.
Some required fields for some objects require special handling.