Understanding Query Results

Query results are returned as nested objects. The primary or “driving” object of the main SELECT statement in a SOQL query contains query results of subqueries.

For example, you can construct a query using either parent-to-child or child-to-parent syntax:

Child-to-parent:
1SELECT Id, FirstName, LastName, AccountId, Account.Name 2FROM Contact 3WHERE Account.Name LIKE 'Acme%'
This query returns one query result (assuming there were not too many returned records), with a row for every contact that met the WHERE clause criteria.
Parent-to-child:
1SELECT Id, Name, 2 ( 3 SELECT Id, FirstName, LastName 4 FROM Contacts 5 ) 6FROM Account 7 WHERE Name like 'Acme%'
This query returns a set of accounts, and within each account, a query result set of Contact fields containing the contact information from the subquery.

The following sample illustrates how to process subquery results:

1private void querySample() {
2  QueryResult qr = null;
3  try {
4    qr = connection.query("SELECT a.Id, a.Name, " +
5      "(SELECT c.Id, c.FirstName, " +
6      "c.LastName FROM a.Contacts c) FROM Account a");
7    boolean done = false;
8    if (qr.getSize() > 0) {
9      while (!done) {
10        for (int i = 0; i < qr.getRecords().length; i++) {
11        Account acct = (Account) qr.getRecords()[i];
12        String name = acct.getName();
13        System.out.println("Account " + (i + 1) + ": " + name);
14        printContacts(acct.getContacts());
15        }
16        if (qr.isDone()) {
17          done = true;
18        } else {
19          qr = connection.queryMore(qr.getQueryLocator());
20        }
21      }
22    } else {
23      System.out.println("No records found.");
24    }
25    System.out.println("\nQuery succesfully executed.");
26  } catch (ConnectionException ce) {
27    System.out.println("\nFailed to execute query successfully, error message " +
28    "was: \n" + ce.getMessage());
29  }
30}
31
32private void printContacts(QueryResult qr) throws ConnectionException {
33  boolean done = false;
34  if (qr.getSize() > 0) {
35    while (!done) {
36    for (int i = 0; i < qr.getRecords().length; i++) {
37      Contact contact = (Contact) qr.getRecords()[i];
38      String fName = contact.getFirstName();
39      String lName = contact.getLastName();
40      System.out.println("Child contact " + (i + 1) + ": " + lName 
41      + ", " + fName);
42    }
43    if (qr.isDone()) {
44      done = true;
45    } else {
46      qr = connection.queryMore(qr.getQueryLocator());
47    }
48    }
49  } else {
50    System.out.println("No child contacts found.");
51  }
52}

SOQL and SOSL Reference

Understanding Query Results