Dynamic Record Cloning

Matt/ March 1, 2016/ Salesforce

I’m building a custom cloning functionality that needs to meet a few objectives, most important of which is being dynamic.  I don’t want to build these out for each object in our instance.

This is fine.  What I’ve done is build a class that reads the meta data of the sObject I want to clone.  The way to do this is to create a map of field names and field tokens and build up a SOQL query select statement with those fields.

Here’s a utility class with a method getCreatableFieldsSOQL() to accomplish just that:

public with sharing class Utils{ 
 
    // Returns a dynamic SOQL statement for the whole object, includes only creatable fields since we will be inserting a cloned result of this query
    public static string getCreatableFieldsSOQL(String objectName, String whereClause){
         
        String selects = '';
         
        if (whereClause == null || whereClause == ''){ return null; }
         
        // Get a map of field name and field token
        Map<String, Schema.SObjectField> fMap = Schema.getGlobalDescribe().get(objectName.toLowerCase()).getDescribe().Fields.getMap();
        list<string> selectFields = new list<string>();
         
        if (fMap != null){
            for (Schema.SObjectField ft : fMap.values()){ // loop through all field tokens (ft)
                Schema.DescribeFieldResult fd = ft.getDescribe(); // describe each field (fd)
                if (fd.isCreateable()){ // field is creatable
                    selectFields.add(fd.getName());
                }
            }
        }
         
        if (!selectFields.isEmpty()){
            for (string s:selectFields){
                selects += s + ',';
            }
            if (selects.endsWith(',')){selects = selects.substring(0,selects.lastIndexOf(','));}
        }
         
        return 'SELECT ' + selects + ' FROM ' + objectName + ' WHERE ' + whereClause;
    }
}

Great!  Now I’m ready to create a placeholder visual force page that I can call via url from a custom button.  The url is simple enough (note I’m using relative links here):

/apex/CloneSpecialWastePWS?sid={!Special_Waste_Profile__c.Id}

Creating that Visual Force page is easy enough – an otherwise blank canvass with a simple call to a doit() method:

<apex:page Controller="CloneSpecialWasteProfile" action="{!doit}"  showHeader="false" sidebar="false">

</apex:page>

And finally the controller for the Visual Force page.  Note the constructor that calls the above utility method, and the doit() method that returns a page reference.  Also, pay attention to how I grab the sid parameter from the URL:

public class CloneSpecialWasteProfile{

    private final Special_Waste_Profile__c p;

    public CloneSpecialWasteProfile() {
        String soql = Utils.getCreatableFieldsSOQL('Special_Waste_Profile__c','id=\'' + ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get('sid') + '\'');
        p = (Special_Waste_Profile__c)Database.query(soql);
   }
    
   public PageReference doit() {
        Special_Waste_Profile__c p2 = p.clone(false, true);
        insert p2;
        p2.Approval_Date__c = null;
        //Reset all of the fields I don't want to copy values for
        update p2;
        PageReference pageRef = new PageReference('/' + p2.Id);// + '/e?retURL=' + p2.Id);
        pageRef.setredirect(true);
        return pageRef;
    }
}

Then I add the button to the layout, and when it’s clicked I’m redirected to the view layout of a cloned record.  Implementing this for another object is as simple as creating a new Visual Force page and controller, and linking to that page from a new custom button on the layout for the sObject.