I'm trying to get accounts from our external system to load into salesforce via a webservice.

I've added a custom field to the Account object and set it as a unique external id.

I'm parsing the xml from the webservice and creating a List of Account objects to use in an upsert. The problem is that any account that has already been added throws a duplicate error when I try to upsert the list. I was hopig that it would recognise that the record existed and switch to an update.

I have also tried to do an upsert within the loop (instead of creating a list then upserting the whole list ofter the loop.)

here is a simplified version of my code

insertAccounts = new List<Account>();
if( this.theXMLDom != null )
{
	if( this.theXMLDom.getElementByTagName( 'request_content' ) != null )
	{
		XmlDom.Element xmlRequestContent = this.theXMLDom.getElementByTagName( 'request_content' );
		XmlDom.Element[] xmlHospitalList = xmlRequestContent.getElementsByTagName( 'hospital' );
		if( xmlHospitalList != null )
		{
			for( XmlDom.Element xmlHospital : xmlHospitalList )
			{
				Account tmpAccount = new Account();
				
				tmpAccount.Name = xmlHospital.getAttribute( 'name' );
				tmpAccount.OpskwanAccountNumber__c = xmlHospital.getAttribute( 'account_number' );

				// either add to a list or upsert individually
				insertAccounts.add( tmpAccount );
				//upsert tmpAccount;
			}
		}
	}
        // upsert a list
        upsert insertAccounts;
}

I suspect that the problem is that by doing this

Account tmpAccount = new Account();

I am creating a new Account object, with a new Id. So the upsert treats it as a separate record that needs to be inserted rather than checking against the current records for an existing record with a matching OpskwanAccountNumber__c.

Am I going to have to do the check against the existing accounts manually? or is there another way to create a list of Account objects which will work properly with upsert?

Thanks for the help,

Mike