SuiteScript Optimization Tip: Prefer Inline Editing

Created: February 9, 2024

This is a sample chapter adapted from the "Basic Optimization with SuiteScript 2.1" Cookbook, part of the SuiteScript by Example series.

Loading and submitting a record is one of the most expensive tasks - in terms of both governance and time - that you can perform in SuiteScript It is crucial to understand that this is not your only option for editing existing records.

When you only need to edit the body fields of a record, you can leverage inline editing using the record.submitFields method from the N/record module.

This has several advantages:

• submitFields uses fewer governance units than load() + save().
• submitFields will generally execute faster because there are likely to be fewer User Event Scripts and Workflows responding to the XEDIT event it fires.
• submitFields is much more concise than repeated setValue() calls.

Turn this:

const rec = record.load({
  type: record.Type.EMPLOYEE,
  id: '123'
})
rec.setValue({
  fieldId: 'firstname',
  value: 'Eric'
})
rec.setValue({
  fieldId: 'middlename',
  value: 'T'
})
rec.setValue({
  fieldId: 'lastname',
  value: 'Grubaugh'
})
rec.setValue({
  fieldId: 'title',
  value: 'SuiteScript Strategist'
})
rec.save()

into this:

record.submitFields({
  type: record.Type.EMPLOYEE,
  id: '123',
  values: {
    firstname: 'Eric',
    middlename: 'T',
    lastname: 'Grubaugh',
    title: 'NetSuite Developer Advisor'
  }
})

submitFields also contains some options that enable it to run faster as well:

• enablesourcing determines whether sourcing will be performed on the updated record. This defaults to true, so sourcing is on by default.
• ignoreMandatory determines whether mandatory field validation is performed on the updated record. This defaults to false, so mandatory field validation is performed by default.

You can speed up the submission process further by disabling both of these options when it makes sense to do so. You pass them in an options parameter, like so:

record.submitFields({
  type: record.Type.EMPLOYEE,
  id: '123',
  values: {
    firstname: 'Eric',
    middlename: 'T',
    lastname: 'Grubaugh',
    title: 'NetSuite Developer Advisor'
  },
  options: {
    enablesourcing: false, // disable sourcing
    ignoreMandatory: true // disable mandatory validation
  }
})

There are a few limitations with record.submitFields to be aware of:

• You cannot use submitFields to modify fields in a sublist.
• You cannot use submitFields to modify fields on a subrecord.
• Not all body fields support inline editing. See the nlapiSubmitField column of the Records Browser to know whether a specific field supports inline editing. If you use inline editing on a field that doesn't support it, NetSuite will still execute the function properly, but behind the scenes it will load and submit the entire record, thus utilizing more governance and time.

Note that submitFields will fire an XEDIT Event type, whereas load and save will fire a VIEW Event followed by an EDIT Event. Keep this in mind if you need other Scripts and Workflows to respond to your submitFields call.