GlideRecord property assignment

Why is this an issue?

Property assignment in GlideRecord may, in specific scenarios, cause unwanted and/or difficult to diagnose results such as:

Duplicate information
Clear columns in the database
Unable to use variable as field parameter

Example:

1// setting new Short Description
2current.short_description = "This is a Test";

In this example, short_description is not only a field, but an Object with several attributes:

Best practices

Use setValue() method as follow:

1// setting new Short Description
2current.setValue("short_description", "This is a Test");
3
4// using variable
5var fields_value = ["short_descrption", "This is a Test"];
6current.setValue(fields_value[0], fields_value[1]);
7
8// for a reference field
9current.setValue("assigned_to", "46f09e75a9fe198100f4ffd8d366d17b");

There is also setDisplayValue():

1// setting record by Display Value
2current.setDisplayValue("assigned_to", "Beth Anglin");