How can I clear an external ID on a record in NetSuite? - netsuite

Question

I need to clear/reset the external ID on a record in NetSuite, but nothing I do is working.
Some of the InventoryItem records are incorrectly mapped to records in another system. I have an application that can sync up the two systems, but I need to clear NetSuite's external IDs first.
Responses don't really need to be SOAP-specific. If you know how to do it with some specific NetSuite/SuiteTalk client, that might point me in the right direction.
What I've Tried
First up, I tried using the nullFieldList... but maybe it doesn't work because externalId is an attribute, not an element?
<messages:update>
<messages:record internalId="7777" xsi:type="accounting:InventoryItem">
<core:nullFieldList xsi:type="core:NullField">
<core:name>externalId</core:name>
</core:nullFieldList>
</messages:record>
</messages:update>
The external ID is just a string, so I tried just setting it to blank. Didn't work either.
<messages:update>
<messages:record internalId="7777" xsi:type="accounting:InventoryItem">
<accounting:externalId></accounting:externalId>
</messages:record>
</messages:update>
I even tried setting the external ID to 0, but I get back a "not unique identifier" error
<messages:update>
<messages:record internalId="7777" xsi:type="accounting:InventoryItem">
<accounting:externalId>0</accounting:externalId>
</messages:record>
</messages:update>
Other Info
I'm using NetSuite's SOAP API v.2013_1
When I say "it doesn't work", I mean: after I do the update, I get a success response similar to the following:
<readResponse>
<platformCore:status isSuccess="true" xmlns:platformCore="urn:core_2013_1.platform.webservices.netsuite.com"/>
<record internalId="7777" externalId="42" xsi:type="listAcct:InventoryItem" xmlns:listAcct="urn:accounting_2013_1.lists.webservices.netsuite.com">
<!-- snip -->
</record>
</readResponse>

Answer 1

If you are using scripts in netsuite you can run a scheduled script to clear records in NS by loading each record and setting the externalid to '' using the following simple code:
var rec= nlapiLoadRecord(type,id);
rec.setFieldValue('externalid','');
nlapiSubmitRecord(rec);
This seemed to work for me in my enviornment which was on 2015.2.

Answer 2

Unfortunately my understanding is that once you set an externalid you cannot clear it, you can set it to another value, but not back to null. I have experienced this both using SuiteScript as well as a Boomi process that uses the 2014.1 endpoint. This may have changed in the recent releases, as I have not tried it recently with SuiteScript nor with a newer endpoint.

Answer 3

You can eliminate the externalId on a record once it's been set. Here's an example using the NetSuite gem:
ns_customer = NetSuite::Records::Customer.get external_id: 'ext_id'
ns_customer.external_id = ''
ns_customer.update
Here's the corresponding XML for update:
<env:Body>
<platformMsgs:update>
<platformMsgs:record xsi:type="listRel:Customer" platformMsgs:internalId="199113" platformMsgs:externalId=""/>
</platformMsgs:update>
</env:Body>

Answer 4

I have had to attempt this before as well. I know the pains you describe. I ended up putting a "-" in front of my external ID to unlink it between my systems. You can do this in SOAP or even as a simple one time csv upload. As it was one time, I did csv.