Primitive Data Types

The API uses the following primitive data types:

Value	Description
base64	Base 64-encoded binary data. Fields of this type are used for storing binary files in Attachments, Documents, and Scontrol objects. In these objects, the Body or Binary field contains the (base64 encoded) data, while the BodyLength field defines the length of the data in the Body or Binary field. In the Document object, you can specify a URL to the document instead of storing the document directly in the record.
boolean	Boolean fields have one of these values: `true` (or 1), or `false` (or 0).
byte	A set of bits.
date	Date data. Fields of this type contain date values, such as ActivityDate in the Event object. Unlike dateTime fields, date fields contain no time value—the time portion of a date field is not relevant and is always set to midnight in the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time zone. If you specify a date value in a query, you can filter on date fields only.
dateTime	Date/time values (timestamps). Fields of this type handle date/time values (timestamps), such as ActivityDateTime in the Event object or the CreatedDate, LastModifiedDate, or SystemModstamp in many objects. Regular dateTime fields are full timestamps with a precision of one second. They are always transferred in the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time zone. In your client application, you might need to translate the timestamp to or from a local time zone. If you specify a dateTime value in a query, you can filter on dateTime fields only. Development tools differ in the way that they handle time data. Some development tools report the local time, while others report only the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time zone. To determine how your development tool handles time values, refer to its documentation. Note The Event object has a DurationInMinutes field that specifies the number of minutes for an event. Even though this is a temporal value, it is an integer type—not a dateTime type.
double	Double values. Fields of this type can contain fractional portions (digits to the right of the decimal place), such as ConversionRate in CurrencyType. In the API, all non-integer values (such as Currency Field Type and Percent Field Type) contain values of type double. Some restrictions may be applied to double values: scale: Maximum number of digits to the right of the decimal place. precision: Total number of digits, including those to the left and the right of the decimal place The maximum number of digits to the left of the decimal place is equal to precision minus scale. In the online application, precision is defined differently—it is the maximum number of digits allowed to the left of the decimal place. Values can be stored in scientific notation if the number is large enough (or, for negative numbers, small enough), as indicated by the W3C XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes Second Edition specification.
int	Fields of this type contain numbers with no fractional portion (digits to the right of a decimal place), such as the NumberOfEmployees in an Account. For integer fields, the digits field specifies the maximum number of digits that an integer can have.
string	Character strings. Fields that are of data type `string` contain text and some have length restrictions depending on the data being stored. For example, in the Contact object, the FirstName field is 40 characters, the LastName field is 80 characters, the MailingStreet is 255 characters.
time	Time values. Fields of this type handle time values, such as FridayEndTime in the BusinessHours object. Development tools differ in the way that they handle time data. Some development tools report the local time, while others report only the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time zone. To determine how your development tool handles time values, refer to its documentation.

These data types are used in the SOAP messages that are exchanged between your client application and the API. When writing your client application, follow the data typing rules defined for your programming language and development environment. Your development tool handles the mapping of typed data in your programming language with these SOAP data types.

The primitive data types are:

specified in the World Wide Web Consortium’s publication XML Schema Part 2: Data Types at the following URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/.
enumerated in the SOAPType field of the Field type, which is described in the fields property of the DescribeSObjectResult.

Primitive types are used as a standardized way to define, send, receive, and interpret basic data types in the SOAP messages exchanged between client applications and the API. In addition, primitive data types are interpreted in a Salesforce-specific way, which is useful for display formatting and for numeric conversion (adding values of different currencies).

For example, Salesforce chooses to interpret a double value passed via SOAP as a double in a number of possible ways, depending on the field definition. If the field type for that data is currency, Salesforce handles the display of the data by prepending it with a currency symbol and inserting a decimal for precision. Similarly, if the field type is percent, Salesforce handles the display of the data by appending a percent sign (%). Regardless of the field type, however, the value is sent in the SOAP message as a double.

The API uses data types called field types that are defined in the WSDLs. For more information, see Field Types and Generating the WSDL File for Your Organization.