Get Marketo Field Data Types

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
June 18, 2018
3 replies
5557 views

I know you can export all fields and their api names and display names, but is there a way to get the data types of the fields in bulk (i.e. in a list)?

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SanfordWhiteman

Level 10

Yes and no.

The Describe Lead API endpoint returns a datatype for all fields, but it's not actually accurate for the purpose of building an offline SQL db structure, if that's what you're thinking. (The max length of text fields isn't correct.) It should at least get you started, though.

Ben_NealAuthor

Level 2

Sanford Whiteman Thanks for the API endpoint, I can the data types from there. I actually am exactly doing that, building a replicated SQL DB holding Lead and Activity data. Can you say more about issues that would arise with data types between Marketo and the SQL structure?

SanfordWhiteman

Level 10

The most problematic area is the text types. If you go by the Describe response you'll end up mapping many Strings to NVARCHAR(255) and will thus lose data, since the actual capacity of many (not all, but you can't know which ones are affected) will be NVARCHAR(2000). As a result, as instances grow toward hundreds of fields (if you're not there already) you need to mark columns SPARSE b/c SQL will not allow the row width otherwise.

In addition, you should never use Currency types in Marketo, period, since they are stored (alarmingly) as Floats. Store value × 100 in an Integer for USD (or just discard fractions entirely).