Admin Win: Create Test Data Quickly In a Sandbox

As admins, we test things in Sandboxes (at least, we should be if we’re being good). Sometimes, we do need to test creating records as users, but often times, we need some data to already exist. Here’s how I make that work for me….

For Loops!

It may sound terrifying to write code, but I promise I’m going to give it to you templated out and break it down for you.

In This Blog:

• Create Data with the Dev Console
  • Step 1: Open the Developer Console
  • Step 2: Open Execute Anonymous Window
  • Step 3: Drop This Code In
  • Step 4: Update the Code to Meet Your Needs
• Break Down the Code
  • Creating Accounts
  • Creating Contacts
• Make it Work

Note: There are lots of ways you can do this, this is just a way that works for me! I found it was easier for me to understand code once I was very familiar with Flow, so I’ve drawn parallels to Flow in the code break down.

Create Data with the Dev Console

Step 1: Open The Developer Console

In case you don’t know how to do that – just hit the setup cog, then “Developer Console”

Step 2: Open an “Execute Anonymous” Window

List<Account> accts = new List<Account>();

        for (Integer i = 0; i < 10; i++){
            Account a = new Account(
                Name = 'Acme #' + i,
                Type = 'Prospect',
                BillingStreet = '415 Mission Street',
                BillingCity = 'San Francisco',
                BillingState = 'CA',
                BillingPostalCode = '94105',
                BillingCountry = 'USA'
            );
            if(i > 5){
                a.Industry = 'Education';
            }
            accts.add(a);
        }

        insert accts;

        List<Contact> cons = new List<Contact>();
        for (Account a : accts){
            for (Integer i = 0; i < 2; i++){
                Contact con = new Contact(
                    AccountId = a.Id,
                    FirstName = 'Test',
                    LastName = 'Smith ' + i
                );
                cons.add(con);
            }            
        }
        insert cons;

In a nutshell, this code is going to let you:

1. Create Account Records
2. Create Contact Records for those Accounts

Skip to breaking down the code to learn more

List<Account> accts = new List<Account>();

        for (Integer i = 0; i < 10; i++){
            Account a = new Account(
                Name = 'Acme #' + i,
                Type = 'Prospect',
                BillingStreet = '415 Mission Street',
                BillingCity = 'San Francisco',
                BillingState = 'CA',
                BillingPostalCode = '94105',
                BillingCountry = 'USA'
            );
            if(i > 5){
                a.Industry = 'Education';
            }
            accts.add(a);
        }

        insert accts;


List<Account> accts = new List<Account>();

        for (Integer i = 0; i < 10; i++){

            Account a = new Account(
                Name = 'Acme #' + i,
                Type = 'Prospect',
                BillingStreet = '415 Mission Street',
                BillingCity = 'San Francisco',
                BillingState = 'CA',
                BillingPostalCode = '94105',
                BillingCountry = 'USA'
            );


            if(i > 5){
                a.Industry = 'Education';
            }

            accts.add(a);

This bit is easy, I promise! We’re going to refer to that list of Accounts from Line 1 – accts. And we’re going to use Dot Notation to say “Add the Account I just defined to the list”. In Flow terms, we’re adding our Single Record Variable to our Record Collection Variable.

        insert accts;

Time to drop the mic. We’re going to take that list of accounts we’ve been adding to, and insert it into the database.

Creating Contacts

This is where we create the Contacts. It is incredibly similar to how we created Accounts.

        List<Contact> cons = new List<Contact>();
        for (Account a : accts){
            for (Integer i = 0; i < 2; i++){
                Contact con = new Contact(
                    AccountId = a.Id,
                    FirstName = 'Test',
                    LastName = 'Smith ' + i
                );
                cons.add(c);
            }            
        }
        insert cons;

Disclaimer: Yes, there is a major loop violation here. We put a loop in a loop. But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out a better way to add more than one contact to my newly created Accounts. If you know a better way, let me know!

        List<Contact> cons = new List<Contact>();

Just like we did for Accounts, we’re creating a list of Contacts to use for our DML operations, and we want to call it cons. Flownatic Parallel: this is the code version of a Record Collection Variable for Contacts.

       for (Account a : accts){

We got creative with this bit (please refer to the earlier disclaimer). We want to cycle through all those accounts we just created, so we do that in line 22. We say we’re going to loop through Account records, we want to refer to each iteration as a, and we’re going to cycle through the list we already defined as accts. Flownatic Parallel: This is a Loop; accts is our Loop Collection and a is our Loop variable.

Note: I reused a as my variable here. That was a personal choice and your mileage may vary.

             for (Integer i = 0; i < 2; i++){

Just as we did for Accounts, we start our For Loop. This time though, we only want to iterate through twice – the first time, i = 0 and the second time i = 1, so we’ll stop when i = 2. Flownatic Parallel: A Loop, but we’re using a condition for our loop, rather than a collection that already exists.

                 Contact con = new Contact(
                    AccountId = a.Id,
                    FirstName = 'Test',
                    LastName = 'Smith ' + i
                );

Again, we’ll look at this next bit as one bit of code. We’re creating a new variable to hold some Contact data and we’re going to refer to that Contact as con. Flownatic Parallel: Single Record Variable for Contact. Between the parenthesis, we’re setting field values. The key this time is we’re using a.Id to set the AccountId field on the contact. Flownatic Parallel: An Assignment to set Contact Account Id to the Account Id variable. Remember to set all required fields your org has for Contacts (including Record Type if that’s important). If you need to differentiate anything, including the + i is a great way to append the loop iteration number to your values.

Remember: If you have duplicate rules enabled, you’ll want to be sure you’re changing data enough to not trigger those rules. You’ll see I had added + i to append the value of i to the Contact’s last name.

                cons.add(con);

Once more, we to refer to that list of Contacts we already declared in Line 21 – cons. And we’re going to add our newly defined Contact values to that list with our variable con. In Flow terms, we’re adding our Single Record Variable to our Record Collection Variable.

        insert cons;

And one last time, we insert into the database.

Making It Work For You

I’ll leave you with these final tips as things to remember to make it work for you:

• Update variables so they’re meaningful to you
• Any time you see the name of an object in this code, you should replace it with whatever object you need in your sandbox
  • List<Contact> cons = new List<Contact>();
    becomes
    List<Opportunity> opptys = new List<Opportunity>();
    to create a list for Opportunities
  • List<Contact> cons = new List<Contact>();
    becomes
    List<Sandwich__c> sammies = new List<Sandwich__c>();
    to create a list for a custom object of Sandwiches
  • Contact con = new Contact( AccountId = a.Id, FirstName = 'Test', LastName = 'Smith ');
    becomes
    Sandwich__c sandy = new Sandwich__c( Account__c = a.Id, Name = 'BLT', Side_1__c = 'Chips ');
    to create a custom object record of Sandwich
• Always include required fields