Reading Text Values from Select Fields

Created: May 17, 2017

When you initially jump in to SuiteScript, working with Select fields can be a bit confusing. When you try to read the dropdown with getValue , you might expect to get back the text that's displayed in the field, but that isn't what happens. Dropdowns in NetSuite always point to either another record instance or an element of a list; these instances and elements all have an internal ID, and that internal ID is what you get back from getValue.

But what if you actually want the text that's displayed in the dropdown?

For that, the N/record module provides a sibling method to getValue called getText. It works exactly the same as getValue, except on Select fields it will return the text displayed rather than the internal ID. For instance, if you needed to pull the name and ID of the Customer field from a Sales Order, that might look something like:

const customerId = salesOrder.getValue({ fieldId: 'entity' })
// 12345
const customerName = salesOrder.getText({ fieldId: 'entity' })
// "Acme, Inc"