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Geolocation Compound Fields

Geolocation fields are accessible in the SOAP and REST APIs as a Location, a structured compound data type, as well as individual latitude and longitude elements.
Using API 30.0 and later, geolocation fields are available in the SOAP and REST APIs as a compound field of type Location, a structured data type that contains the following fields.
  • latitude
  • longitude

Geolocation fields are provided on many standard objects, such as Account, Contact, Quote, and User, as part of their address field or fields. Geolocation fields can also be added as custom fields to standard or custom objects.

  • Geolocation compound fields are read-only, and are only accessible using the SOAP and REST APIs. See Compound Field Considerations and Limitations for additional details of the restrictions this imposes.
  • Although geolocation fields appear as a single field in the user interface, custom geolocation fields count as three custom fields towards your organization’s limits: one for latitude, one for longitude, and one for internal use.

Note

Retrieving Compound Geolocation Fields

Using compound fields can simplify code that works with geolocations, especially for SOQL queries. SOQL SELECT clauses can reference geolocations directly, instead of the individual component fields.
1SELECT location__c 
2FROM Warehouse__c
To write code that’s compatible with API versions before 30.0, as well as API 30.0 and above, use the individual latitude and longitude fields.
1SELECT location__latitude__s, location__longitude__s 
2FROM Warehouse__c

Compound geolocation field values are returned as a structured data type, Location. Code that works with compound geolocation fields needs to reference the individual components of the returned value. See the sample code in Address Compound Fields.