Using standard controller's "getRecord" method

There seems to be a common problem using the getRecord function, so I am going to write it down here.  This problem has haunted me a few times now.

Whenever you use a controller extension, extending a standard object, you can use the getRecord() to get the reference to the record.  For example, if you have an extension to the contact object, this can be what your Apex class looks like:

public class ContactExtension
{
    private Contact contact;

    public ContactExtension(ApexPages.StandardController sController)
    {
        this.contact = (Contact)sController.getRecord();
    }
}

Besides the obvious constructor, you will most likely have some other methods inside your class to manipulate the contact.  Let's say you want to provide a form so the user can change email address and phone number of the contact.  Your VisualForce class looks very simple

<apex:page standardController="Contact" extensions="ContactExtension">
    {!greeting}
    <apex:form>
        <apex:inputField value="{!contact.Email" />
        <apex:inputField value="{!contact.MobilePhone}" />
        <apex:commandButton action="{!save}" value="Save" />
    </apex:form>
</apex:page>

The {!greeting} is going to display some greeting messages.  That means we will need to write a getGreeting() method in the class.

If this is the definition of your getGreeting() inside the class,

public String getGreeting()
{
    return 'Hi ' + contact.FirstName + ' how have you been?  Please update the following.';
}

you will then get an error message that looks like this:

System.SObjectException: SObject row was retrieved via SOQL without querying the requested field: Contact.FirstName

Most of us think that as soon as we call the getRecord() method, then the entire record is loaded into the contact variable.  However if you have an object with 5000 fields, and you only need to use 2 or 3 in your Visualforce pages, do you think it really makes sense to load all 5000 fields for that record into the contact variable?  Probably not.

Then what can you do?  The easiest way is to do add this into your Visualforce page:
<apex:outputText value="{!contact.FirstName}"/>

If you say, but I don't want to display the contact name twice!  Then you can simply change this to:
<apex:outputText value="{!contact.FirstName}" rendered="false" />

By adding rendered="false", that will hide this variable.  Or perhaps use <apex:variable> instead, such as:
<apex:variable value="{!contact.FirstName}" var="contactFName" />

When you load this Visualforce page, the standard controller will scan through your Visualforce page and knows that you need this field, and when making the getRecord() method call, it automatically and implicitly adds this FirstName field into the SOQL.

Remember, if you want to use any field in your extension via the getRecord() method, you need to let it be known by making sure that the field exists in your Visualforce page!

(Another alternative is to write your own SOQL in your Apex class, but why make an extra SOQL call when you can avoid it?)

Caution with the ID field

The subject says it all.  It is important to know that Salesforce's Id field is a field that needs to be handled with care.  It is a read-only field.  

Here is a use case that I have encountered.  I'm going to keep using my Rig example from my last blog entry.  Suffice to know is that I have an object that stores information about rigs, which are big machineries you deploy at well sites in order to drill oil.  One of the things we capture in the Rig object is the Id of the rig owner (Rig_Owner__c), which is a lookup to the standard Account object.

Let's say all account information and rig information has been imported into Salesforce from an external system, and all data has been verified to be imported successfully.   Now one of the rigs has been sold from company A to company B.  We need to update the rig information.  When the user clicks the lookup icon to the Account, too many records are returned because the system has over 50000 account records.

It's decided we need to add a custom checkbox (or boolean) field into the Account object, called Rig_Owner_Indicator__c, and is set to true only for accounts that are rig owners.  This should help eliminate the number of records returned when we use the Lookup Filter associated with the lookup field.

After adding the column and defaulting the field values for all records to be false, now it's time we set those account records that are actually rig owners.  All rig owners are already identified in the Rig_Owner__c of the Rig object.  So one way we can run our code is:

List<Rig__c> rigs = [SELECT Rig_Owner__c FROM Rig__c];

List<Account> accounts = new List<Account>();

for (Rig__c rig : rigs)

{

    account RigAccount = new Account();

    RigAccount.Id = rig.Rig_Owner__c;

    RigAccount.Rig_Owner_Indicator__c = true;

    accounts.add(RigAccount);

}

update accounts;

However, you will get an error message that says the Id is not writeable, as this screen shot from Eclipse shows.

The offending line is

    RigAccount.Id = rig.Rig_Owner__c;

In order to fix the problem, you will need to instantiate your Id in the line where you create a new instance of the Accout SObject.  That is, if you rewrite the above as below (note the bolded line), the Apex code will execute successfully, and your Rig Owner Indicator will be populated as desired.

List<Rig__c> rigs = [SELECT Rig_Owner__c FROM Rig__c];

List<Account> accounts = new List<Account>();

for (Rig__c rig : rigs)

{

    account RigAccount = new Account(Id = rig.Rig_Owner__c);

    RigAccount.Rig_Owner_Indicator__c = true;

    accounts.add(RigAccount);

}

update accounts;

The code above will now compile.  That goes to show that when you are trying to manipulate the Id field, you need to set it when you instantiate the SObject.  Make sure you do NOT attempt to set the Id field.  Remember, it is a read-only field.

Lastly, the revised Apex code is still faulty because it will fail if more than one rig belongs to the same rig owner.  This is related to adding SObjects to List collection objects.  I will leave that to my next blog.

How to write SOQL to traverse across two objects and their junction object

Last month I built a prototype for a Salesforce organized event in Calgary to show how to build applications in the cloud for the energy industry.

It was a fairly simple system:  it's about deploying rigs to wells so that drilling can happen, and so that oil can be extracted.

This is a prototype to show what Salesforce can do so the use case is very simplified.  To model this use case, I have a Rig object, a Well object and a junction object called the Rig Deployment that records which rig is deployed to which well, start date and the scheduled end date, etc.  This Rig Deployment object contains all current and past deployments so this object has potential to contain a lot of data.

Using the schema builder, the entity relationship diagram looks like this:




The first screen of the prototype is to display a google map of deployed rigs in Canada (there are already lots of examples online to show how to display google maps with Visualforce and Apex so I will not cover that here, however if you want me to go through that then please leave me a note).

This first screen requires a query into the Rig Deployment object because the date related fields in the object contain information on which rigs are currently deployed.  Remember that this object contains current and past data, and we only want the current data.  All I need to display is a map with wells that have some rigs deployed at the location, the names of the rigs deployed and the scheduled completion date.

If you have read my last blog, you already know that when I started learning SOQL I had a few challenges because I had to change my mindset when it comes to writing the query language.  In traditional SQL you can write the query with a simple SELECT statement and a few INNER JOINs and you're done.  Once again, writing a SOQL query to traverse across two objects and the junction object was a daunting task at first.  You really need to divide and conquer.  Here is how.

First, you need to know that there are two ways in which you can traverse objects in SOQL.  One is to go from child to parent, and one is to go from parent to children.

Going from child to parent is pretty straightforward because all you need is the relationship name (which ends   in __r for custom objects).  The Rig Deployment object is the child object of both rig object and well object.  So let's say you want to retrieve the name of the well, then the SOQL is simply:

SELECT 

    Scheduled_Completion_Date__c,

    Well__r.Name 

FROM 

    Rig_Deployment__c 

which will return all the records in Rig Deployment object with the name of the well.  Note that because we are traversing the information from child to parent, when we access the name of the well, we need to indicate the relationship by using Well__r instead of Well__c.  Remember we only want the information of currently deployed wells, so we need to include the date filter.  The above will be rewritten as:

SELECT 

    Scheduled_Completion_Date__c,

    Well__r.Name 

FROM 

    Rig_Deployment__c 

WHERE

    Completion_Date__c = NULL

Going from parent to child looks a little more complicated but only because you need to write a sub-query.   Now this time let's say you want to go from Rig to Rig Deployment object to display a list of rigs and the scheduled completion date for the current deployment.  The SOQL is:

SELECT

    Name, 

    (

    SELECT 

        Scheduled_Completion_Date__c

    FROM

        Rig_Deployments__r

    WHERE

        Completion_Date__c = NULL

    )

FROM

    Rig__c

Remember that inside the sub-query you need to pluralize the object (because it's the child object and is supposed to have more than one record) and then append the pluralized object name with __r instead of __c because you are traversing from the Rig object to its related Rig Deployment object.

Now the last piece of the puzzle.  You need to combine the two queries together.  But look!  Did you see how almost identical the two queries already are?  The only differences between the two are:

1) The second query contains the column indicating the name of the well, and

2) The second query uses the pluralized object name that ends with __r in the FROM clause. 

That means in this case all you really need to do is to add the well name column into the second query and you're almost done.

SELECT

    Name, 

    (

    SELECT 

        Scheduled_Completion_Date__c,

        Well__r.Name

    FROM

        Rig_Deployments__r

    WHERE

        Completion_Date__c = NULL

    )

FROM

    Rig__c

Now, I said almost done because it seems to me SOQL joins by outer join by default.  So the above query will return all rigs, even though they are not currently deployed anywhere.

If you ONLY want rigs that are currently deployed, excluding rigs that are sitting idle, then you'll need to add a WHERE clause.  But worry not.  You already wrote it, sort of, when you wrote the first query above.  The WHERE clause will indicate that the rig must be in the Rig Deployment object that has a blank completion date.  So the final query is merely an extension to the last query.

This is the final SOQL (the Rig__c in the Rig Deployment object is the lookup field to the Rig object - that is, it stores the Salesforce record id).

SELECT

    Name, 

    (

    SELECT 

        Scheduled_Completion_Date__c,

        Well__r.Name

    FROM

        Rig_Deployments__r

    WHERE

        Completion_Date__c = NULL

    )

FROM

    Rig__c

WHERE

    Id IN

    (

    SELECT 

        Rig__c

    FROM

        Rig_Deployment__c

    WHERE

        Completion_Date__c = NULL

    )

You see that my main query retrieves data from the Rig object.  However it doesn't have to be this way.  You can also use the Well object as your main object in the query.  It all depends on what fields you are trying to retrieve.  The lesson I learned from this is that the junction object ends up sitting in the sub-query.  It is after all, the child object so it should be used in the sub-query.

Now, does anyone know is there an even simpler way to write an inner join without having to write the last WHERE clause I added above?

Counting records using SOQL

Sorry for the lack of update.  The last few days I was studying hard for my Winter 13 Maintenance exam for both my Developer and Administrator certifications.  Sure glad I passed them both, and I'm now back to my blog.

Today I'm going for a smaller article but for me personally, a significant one.  It is one of those things that really reminds me I have to have a change of mindset when constructing SOQL queries. This example below is a really really simple example, but I have to admit, it took me awhile to get there.

Let's say, I have a Province table and a PostalCode table.  You want to display a list of provinces including the number of postal codes for each province.

I came from SQL Server background.  In the past, when I saw a request like that, I would think, ok, start from the Province table and then inner join to the PostalCode table and get the count.   The query would look something like that:

SELECT p.Name, Count(pc.*) AS NumPostalCodes
FROM Province p INNER JOIN PostalCode pc ON p.Id = pc.ProvinceId

My point is, I always think from Province table (the parent) towards the PostalCode table (the child), and not the other way around.  Of course in SQL it does not really matter because you could just swap Province and PostalCode around and you will get the same results.

Alas, in SOQL, you cannot have two table names in the FROM clause.  What could you do then?  It would be nice if I could do something like:

SELECT Name, (SELECT Count(Id) FROM Postal_Codes__r) 
FROM Province__c

however SOQL does not allow aggregate functions in subqueries.

Let's say instead of getting the count, you just want to dump an entire list of provinces and the related postal codes.  In SOQL you could do it like that:

SELECT Name, (SELECT Name FROM Postal_Codes__r) FROM Province__c

This is not bad but notice that this is not a linear list.  The second column of each row returned is in turn a result set.

If you want a simple linear result set, just like you would in the SQL world, what you want is:

SELECT Province__r.Name, Name FROM Postal_Code__c

This SOQL will give you a linear list of all provinces and their related postal codes.  Look!  The starting point of this SOQL is from the child table.

This is what I talked about earlier, you have to have a change of mindset when construting SOQL queries.  Once you get that, getting the count is simply a slight modification of the query statement:

SELECT Province__r.Name, Count(Name) NumPostalCodes 
FROM Postal_Code__c 
GROUP BY Province__r.Name

Again, like I said, this is a very simple example, but for me to get to the last SOQL it took me almost an hour.  It's just not natural for me to think from the child table when I encounter a request like that.  I hope you find this information useful.

Next time I want to talk about retrieving records across 2 tables via the junction table in a master-detail relationship.

Strange behaviour of apex:column

Let's say you have a custom field, say Age, on a custom object, say Artist, which is a numeric field with 0 decimal places.  If you want to display it in a table showing a list of artists, normally you would do something like this:


<apex:page standardController="Artist__c" recordSetVar="artists">
<apex:pageBlock >
  <apex:pageBlockTable value="{!artists}" var="c">
    <apex:column>
      {!c.Name} 
    </apex:column>
    <apex:column>
      {!c.Age__c}
    </apex:column>
</apex:pageBlockTable>
</apex:pageBlock>  

However, in the display you'll find out your Age column is displayed as a field with 1 decimal place.  (Interestingly, I looked at the NumberOfEmployees field, a numeric field in the standard Account object, and it does not have that problem.)  It can be understood because after all, all numeric fields in Salesforce are decimal fields.  (If you go back to the set up menu and create a field, you only specify a Numeric field and then define the number of decimal places.  So that means Salesforce does not distinguish between a decimal field and an integer field.  All numeric fields are decimal fields.)

So to circumvent that, all you need to do is to use the Round function.

    <apex:column>
      {!Round(c.Age__c, 0)}
    </apex:column>

Now, there is a value attribute for <apex:column> which you can also use.  So the above can be written as:
    <apex:column value="{!c.Age__c}">
       
Well, what do you know.  This time, the Age is displayed properly with no decimal points.  Not only that, the column, via the use of value attribute, will display the column header.

So, again, with this code,

<apex:page standardController="Artist__c" recordSetVar="artists">
<apex:pageBlock>
  <apex:pageBlockTable value="{!artists}" var="c">
    <apex:column >
      {!c.Name} 
    </apex:column>
    <apex:column >
      {!c.Age__c}
    </apex:column>
    <apex:column >
       {!Round(c.Age__c, 0)}
    </apex:column>
                
    <apex:column value="{!c.Age__c}"/>  <!-- this displays the Age correctly -->
                
  </apex:pageBlockTable>
</apex:pageBlock>    
</apex:page>


you'll get this:

Notice that when you use the value attribute, the column header is automatically displayed.

Now, what if the field has some decimal places?

Let's say we also have a Height field with 3 decimal places after the decimal point.  Let's also say for simplicity, all male artists are 1.80m tall and all female artists are 1.814m tall.

If you replace all the Age__c above with Height__c, you'll see a new table.  This time, however, worse yet, you see 1.8 and not 1.800 for the male artists.  This time even the Round function used in the second height column does not help matter.  The code is this,


<apex:page standardController="Artist__c" recordSetVar="artists">
<apex:pageBlock>
  <apex:pageBlockTable value="{!artists}" var="c">
    <apex:column >
      {!c.Name} 
    </apex:column>
    <apex:column >
      {!c.Height__c}
    </apex:column>
    <apex:column >
       {!Round(c.Height__c, 3)}
    </apex:column>

    <apex:column value="{!c.Height__c}"/>  <!-- again, this displays the Height correctly -->
                             
  </apex:pageBlockTable>
</apex:pageBlock>    
</apex:page>


and this is the screen display.

But once again, the value attribute for <apex:column> shows the correct answer.

Now, finally, to the part that really got me into writing this article.  From the above, you may feel that the value attribute is the right way to go because it seems to give the most desirable display of field values.  Now, what if you want to round the column so it only shows 2 decimal places?

Sure, wrap your formula expression for the value attribute with the Round function call, so the last line of the code is:

    <apex:column value="{!Round(c.Height__c, 2)}"/>

Let's run it!

Oh no, an error!

There is no syntax error for sure.  You know Salesforce won't even let you save your code unless it's syntactically correct.  The above change saves successfully.  The error really does not make any sense.  This to me looks like a bug in Salesforce.

With my experimentation, to successfully display the value correctly, you may still want to stay away from the value attribute.  Instead, make use of a combination of <apex:outputText> and <apex:param> to format your data.  This is the final code (Note:  you will have to use the headerValue attribute to specify the column name this way).

<apex:page standardController="Artist__c" recordSetVar="artists">
<apex:pageBlock>
  <apex:pageBlockTable value="{!artists}" var="c">
    <apex:column >
      {!c.Name} 
    </apex:column>
    <apex:column >
      {!c.Height__c}
    </apex:column>
    <apex:column >
       {!Round(c.Height__c, 3)}
    </apex:column>

    <apex:column value="{!c.Height__c}"/>  <!-- again, this displays the Height correctly -->
                    
    <apex:column headerValue="Height Column">
      <apex:outputText value="{0, number, #0.00}">
        <apex:param value="{!c.Height__c}"/>
      </apex:outputText>
    </apex:column>
                                
  </apex:pageBlockTable>
</apex:pageBlock>    
</apex:page>

and this is the final output.  The last column is what I really want.

Converting a List (of sObjects) to a Map

This article assumes you already know Salesforce's powerful way to collect objects, List, Map and Set.  If you are not familiar with them, you should go to the documentation for more information first.

What I found somewhat undocumented (it actually is documented but you don't find its usage this way in a lot of places) is a way you can initialize a Map collection.  You probably already know Map is used to provide a mapping between a primitive type (such as Integer, String, etc. used as the key) and practically any other type (used as the value).  A simple example is:

Map<Integer, String> myMap1 = new Map<Integer, String>{ 1 => 'a', 2 => 'b'};

The above declares a map variable, called myMap1 which contains 2 elements.  The first element contains a mapping from the integer 1 to the string a, and the second element contains a mapping from the integer 2 to the string b.

The "value" does not have to a primitive type - it can be an sObject, for example.

Map<Id, Account> myMap2 = new Map<Id, Account>();

The above is a variable myMap2 that stores a mapping between Id and the account sObject.

If you have run a SOQL statement and has retrieved a list of contacts, such as:

List<Contact> myContactList1 = [SELECT Id FROM Contact];

you can then "convert" this list to a map, by doing this:

Map<Id, Contact> myMap3 = new Map<Id, Contact>(myContactList1);

The new operator will convert this list (myContactList1) to create the map variable myMap3.  The key of myMap3 is obviously the Id field because that is what is selected.  In fact, Id is always used as the key in this context.  It is also always implicit.  So even if your SOQL had been:

List<Contact> myContactList2 = [SELECT Title FROM Contact];

the key will still be the Id field of Contact.  I think the Id will be based on what sObject you are selecting from.  In this case, it is the Contact, and therefore the Id will be the id of contacts.

The value part, however, is dependent on what you "select".  The list myContactList1 only selects the Id field, so the value only contains the Id field as well.  The list myContactList2 however, selects the Title field, so you can actually access the Title field via this myContactList2 collection.

Let's say you have a contact named Tim Barr.  If you run the following statements, you will see that in the debug log, the value for this contact contains the Id as well as the Title.

Contact c = [SELECT Id from Contact where FirstName = 'Tim' and LastName='Barr'];

List<Contact> myContactList2 = [SELECT Title FROM Contact];

Map<Id, Contact> myMap3 = new Map<Id, Contact>(myContactList2);

system.debug(myMap3.get(c.Id));

It seems to be the Id field is again implicit in the value too.  The SELECT clause determines what other fields are available in the value.

New "Geolocation" data type

[Updated:  2012-11-14

I apologize I made a typo.  My original post had the fields to be
Location_Latitude__s and Location_Longitude__s.

They should instead be

Location__Latitude__s and Location__Longitude__s.

Note the two underline characters between your field name and the "Latitude__s" or "Longitude__s" portion instead of one as I originally posted.  I have already updated my code below.

]

Currently the new Geolocation data type is fairly limited.  I'll let you read the limitations here.

However, there are a few things to note.

1. a Geolocation field is actually a component field.  It contains 2 pieces of information, Latitude and Longitude (and also an internally used information which is not exposed to us users or developers.)

2. you can use either degrees or decimal places to describe your location.  However, it is important to note that Salesforce always uses the decimal point version.  The degree option is purely for representation purposes.  In fact, when you're entering a geolocation information, you are entering the values in decimal places, and then it'll be displayed as degrees after the data is saved.  The decimal point version is probably the easier way to go.

3. If you have a custom field of this type, say, Location__c, as you know, this is a component field that actually contains 2 pieces of information.  In your SOQL, if you need to access the latitude or longitude, all you need to do is to drop the "__c", and instead append it with "__Latitude__s" or "__Longitude__s".  For example,

SELECT Location__Latitude__s, Location__Longitude__s FROM
Person LIMIT 1;

4. Seems to me the only main thing you can now do is to calculate the distance between two points.  You now have 2 new SF functions to use, Distance() and Geolocation().  However, Geolocation() cannot be used alone.  It is always used in conjunction with Distance().  You may want to refer to the manual for more information.  The manual probably explains the usage better than I can.  NOTE:  I am able to use Distance() in the WHERE clause of a SOQL, but I have not been able to use it in the SELECT clause of the SOQL.  I will look further into it.

Trigger to disallow deleting parent if children exist

Whenever you have a master-detail relationship, and you try to delete a parent record using the standard Salesforce interface, Salesforce will delete that record and any associated children records.


Let's say you have a parent "Invoice" object and the child is "Line Item".  Each invoice record may have zero or more Line Item child records.

If you want to not let users delete that record, then you'll need to write a trigger.  There are two ways to do that.

If you have been writing stored procedures forever like myself, my normal approach would be to do an SQL like that:

SELECT i.Id, Count(li.Id) AS Counter FROM Invoice__c i INNER JOIN
    Line_Item__c li ON i.Id = li.InvoiceId

Basically what you want to do is to go through each invoice in the parameter list and do a count of how many line items there are.  Unfortunately in SOQL you cannot include aggregate functions in sub-queries (aggregate functions can only be at the root-query level).

So, the next best thing is to just do a list of each Invoice record and associated Line Item records.  The trigger code looks like:


trigger DeleteInvoice on Invoice__c (before delete) 
{
    List<Invoice__c> invoices = [select id, (select name from line_items__r) 
        from invoice__c where
        id in :Trigger.old];

    for (Invoice__c inv: invoices)
    {
        if (!inv.line_items__r.isempty())
        {
            Trigger.oldMap.get(inv.id).addError('error goes here');
        }
    }
}


So what the above does is to first get a list of invoices and associated line items.  Then go through each invoice and see if there are any related line items.  If there are, then provide an error to that invoice.

What I found out is that I might be able to simplify that  little.  Instead of going through the Invoice__c first, I can go through Line_Item__c first, as this following trigger shows:


trigger DeleteInvoice on Invoice__c (before delete) 
{
    List<Line_item__c> lis = [select invoice__c from line_item__c 
        where invoice__c in :Trigger.oldMap.keyset()];

    for (line_item__c li : lis)
    {
          trigger.oldmap.get(li.invoice__c).adderror('error goes here');
    }
}


What this second trigger does is to simplify look at the child table and find those line items where the invoice id matches the invoice ids in the parameter list.  The invoices associated with these line items retrieved are the ones that you do not want to allow deletion.

It looks to me that the second trigger is shorter because it does not have to have the "if" statement.  I don't know if there is any substantial performance improvement, but the code looks somewhat cleaner.

What do you think?

Calling an APEX method from interface (like a button)

An Apex class is just a regular class.  Besides calling it from trigger or as a Visualforce controller, you should be able to call it directly from the frontend, such as when the user clicks a button.  There is a way to do that.

Say this is your standard class.

public MyClass
{
    public static String MyReply(String psInputA, String psInputB)
    {
        return psInputA + ' ' + psInputB;
    }

}

If you want to call the method from your button, you need to make some changes to the above class.  It has to be called as a webservice.  Basically what you need to do is to change the scope of the class to global, and indicate the method as a web service.  So the above needs to be changed to:


global MyClass
{
    webservice static String MyReply(String psInputA, String psInputB)
    {
        return psInputA + ' ' + psInputB;
    }
}

Now you can define your button action.  You can go to your object, create a new custom button (Create -> Objects -> [object name] -> Custom Buttons and Links.  You want to run a javascript, so select "Execute Javascript" in the Behavior picklist.  The code for your javascript should look like this:

{!REQUIRESCRIPT("/soap/ajax/25.0/connection.js")}

{!REQUIRESCRIPT("/soap/ajax/25.0/apex.js")}

var result = sforce.apex.execute("MyClass", "MyReply", {psInputA:"{!Invoice__c.Name}", psInputB:"YES"});

alert(result);

As you can tell, you can easily use expression statement to incorporate data.

Please try it and let me know if it works for you!

Using the standard Name field

Be careful what you save in the Name field - it is a text field, so if you have Names that are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, then if you sort them, 1 is followed by 10 instead of 2.  If you really need to treat them as numbers, use a custom field of the Number type instead.

Process execution order

I think it's really important to understand the execution order of some of the processes in Salesforce.  For example, you need to know that when saving a record, validation rules will be executed before assignment, and assignment takes place before workflows.  Finally, escalation rules will get fired.

Do note that there are a lot more processes happening in the background (triggers, for example).  To understand Salesforce, and to study for your exam, make sure you know the complete order of execution!!

Attributes for : showHeader, sidebar, standardStylesheets

As you know the most simplistic Visualforce page can look like this:

<apex:page>
<h1>main title</h1>
content
</apex:page>

You can provide attributes such as showHeader and sidebar to determine whether you want to show the header or sidebar, respectively, simply by setting the values to true or false, such as:


<apex:page showHeader="true" sidebar="false">
<h1>main title</h1>
content
</apex:page>


Do note that if showHeader is set to false, then sidebar will also be hidden!

Note also, that simply by setting showHeader = false, it does NOT mean you are not using the Salesforce's stylesheets (i.e. Salesforce stylesheets are still being applied).  If you do not want to use any Salesforce's stylesheets at all, then you also need to use the standardStylesheets attribute and set it to false.

What I intend to cover in this blog.....

I received my Force.com Developer and Administrator certifications, and I plan to keep going to take the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud Consultant Certification exams, so this blog will have a combination of everything there is to know and learn about Salesforce.com.  I'm going to use tags to distinguish between topics, and I hope that will be helpful!!

Trust me, some of these posts will be very very beginner's information but I will also try to post something that are more advanced as time goes on.

My First Post

Today is 11 September 2012 (wow has it been 11 years already....?)

After passing my Salesforce Force.com Developer exam in April, I kept studying Salesforce and as of yesterday I had also passed my Salesforce Administration exam.

I finally decided it's time I put together what I have learned in a blog.  So this is what this blog site is going to be about.

kk