Workaround for Query only first N records in Flows – Part 1

Hola! 🙂

In this article, we shall see how we can set up an equivalent for LIMIT N clause(“Select… LIMIT 5 “; SOQL, ring a bell?) in a flow.

For those who are not aware about the LIMIT N clause, what it does is sets the maximum number of records that will be returned by the SOQL. Right now, we don’t have the ability to set a maximum limit on the records returned when we are using Get records element.

But we can certainly work our way around it.

Logic:

The idea is to first do a normal query that gets all the records and then loop over the collection and add the first N records to a new collection by checking the counter variable’s value in the loop over each iteration.

It’s time to Flow!

Step 1: The usual drill, we start the flow by creating some variables.

Step 2: Use a Get Records element to query all the Account records.

Step 3: Use a Loop element to iterate over all the Account records.

Step 4: Use a decision element to keep checking the value of varRecordLimit variable inside the loop.

Step 5: If value of varRecordLimit is greater than 1, then using an Assignment element, we add the Account record to a record collection variable and decrement the value of varRecordLimit variable.

Step 6: If value of varRecordLimit is less than 1, we skip the iteration and move to the next one.

Step 7: Finally a Screen element to display the collection variable records.

Final Flow

Important Note:

This workaround is not going to work for objects which have more than 50000 records. It will rather give you an exception. Tip: Always use filters to narrow down the sized of query results.

In my next post, we shall try to address this issue when there are more than 50000 records.

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