At some point in every Salesforce project, a need arises to export the details of fields to a spreadsheet.

This can help:

• Share field details with stakeholders
• Map fields for migrations and integrations
• Document what’s in the org

If you need to extract a spreadsheet of fields from your org, you have several options. Each has drawbacks:

• AppExchange apps like Field Dumper (free)
  • Usually require vendor assessments, security reviews, and may incur cost
• Third-party sites like Salesforce Schema Lister and D-Feldt Describe
  • Need to connect to your org, which represents a security risk
• Create a custom solution with the Apex Schema class or the sObject Describe REST API
  • Can involve significant effort; violates the buy-before-build principle

Here’s an alternative, inspired by a StackExchange post on the subject. The output is less pretty than the options above, but it offers a functional solution to the problem.

In the SFDX CLI, run the following:

sfdx force:data:soql:query -u my-user-alias -r "csv" -q "SELECT EntityDefinition.QualifiedApiName, Label, DeveloperName, DataType FROM FieldDefinition WHERE EntityDefinition.QualifiedApiName IN ('Account', 'Contact', 'Case') ORDER BY Label ASC" > C:\fields.csv

Explanation:

• sfdx force:data:soql:query tells the SFDX CLI to perform a SOQL query; see docs
• -u my-user-alias tells the SFDX CLI which user alias to use
• -r "csv" uses comma-separated values (CSV) for the output
• -q "SELECT ..." queries the FieldDefinition object; note the EntityDefinition filter is required
• > C:\fields.csv saves the output to the given path on your computer

There you have it! A simple way to extract a list of fields from given objects, without having to use third-party apps or websites.

Last modified on 2021-07-06