Salesforce: Object Prefix

For Salesforce administrators and developers with years of experience work in Salesforce area, all of us should know 0015000000tCKZx is an Account record while 00350000023hJC0 is a Contact. You can easily note this from the web URL. This also serves as record Id whether as 15 or 18 characters. Look at the first 3 characters prefix, we can determine what is the object behind that record in both Standard and Custom object.

Standard Object
For a standard object, all the prefix is the same. I am not going to re-list each Standard object with the correspondence prefix, as many of fellow blogger and Salesforce article has listed it:

• A very little key [prefix] will open a very heavy door
• Obscure Salesforce object key prefixes

Custom Object

Each custom object has a unique prefix for each instance, it is the same with a standard object where prefix length = 3 characters. You can notice it in the URL when open the record or click custom object tab for that object. Here a blog is written sometimes back to get a tab view without having to create custom object tab - Hidden Tab for Custom Object

But, if the object just created and no tab is created for it, you would be a little difficult to get the prefix as it is not stated anywhere in Salesforce. Here is the workaround - use a free tool Developer Workbench

Once you login, go to Standard & Custom Objects menu, select the object from the dropdown menu and look for keyPrefix, see screenshot below:

Another use case, you have a Salesforce record Id, but you do not know what is the object for that record Id. Go through each object using Developer Workbench is way too hard. Use Developer Console with simple apex script will easily find the object. Click your name in Salesforce then click Developer Console

Once Developer Console open, click Debug then Open Execute Anonymous Window

It will show last apex code executed (if any), change the code as below (remember to change the Id), then click Execute button - also make sure to select Open Log checkbox

Apex code: System.debug(System.LoggingLevel.ERROR, Id.valueOf('01Q50000000IhVI').getSObjectType());

See the highlight, 01Q50000000IhVI is a record for Competitor__c custom object.

If you are confused or hard to find the object name, select Debug Only checkbox, it will filter only to show object that you are looking for.

above screenshot is not related to earlier debug

Using Developer Console also can find prefix as we did using Developer Workbench, use following apex code: 

Schema.DescribeSObjectResult r = CustomObject__c.sObjectType.getDescribe();

String keyPrefix = r.getKeyPrefix();

System.debug('Printing --'+keyPrefix );

Or in one line command:
System.debug('keyPrefix: ' + CustomObject__c.SObjectType.getDescribe().getKeyPrefix());

Change CustomObject__c to your real object API name. Here is the result:

RegEx to validate Salesforce Id

If you familiar with RegEx, here is the regex to validate Salesforce Id 

a-zA-Z0-9]{15,18}

Idea
Vote for this idea - Add Key Prefix to (Custom) Object's Detail Page