Book Image

Visualforce Development Cookbook

By : Keir Bowden
Book Image

Visualforce Development Cookbook

By: Keir Bowden

Overview of this book

Visualforce, in conjunction with Apex, makes it easy to develop sophisticated, custom UIs for Force.com desktop and mobile apps without having to write thousands of lines of code and markup. The "Dynamic Binding" feature of Visualforce lets you develop generic Visualforce pages to display information related to the records without necessarily knowing which data fields to show. This is accomplished through a formula-like syntax, which makes it simple to manage even a complex hierarchy of records. "Visualforce Development Cookbook" provides solutions for a variety of challenges faced by Salesforce developers and demonstrates how easy it is to build rich, interactive pages using Visualforce. Whether you are looking to make a minor addition to the standard page functionality or override it completely, this book will provide you with the required help throughout. "Visualforce Development Cookbook" starts with explaining the simple utilities and builds up to advanced techniques for data visualization and reuse of functionality. This book contains recipes that cover various topics like creating multiple records from a single page, visualizing data as charts, using JavaScript to enhance client-side functionality, building a public website and making data available to a mobile device. "Visualforce Development Cookbook" provides lots of practical examples to enhance and extend the Salesforce user interface.

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Visualforce Development Cookbook
Keir Bowden
Sep, 2013 | 334 pages
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Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Visualforce Development Cookbook
Visualforce Development Cookbook
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
General Utilities
General Utilities
Introduction
Overriding standard buttons
Data-driven styling
Turning off an action poller
Visualforce in the sidebar
Passing parameters to action methods
Reacting to URL parameters
Passing parameters between Visualforce pages
Opening a pop-up window
Adding a launch page
Testing a custom controller
Testing a controller extension
2
Custom Components
Custom Components
Introduction
Passing attributes to components
Updating attributes in component controllers
Passing action methods to components
Data-driven decimal places
The custom iterator component
Setting a value into a controller property
Multiselecting related objects
Notifying the containing page controller
3
Capturing Data Using Forms
Capturing Data Using Forms
Introduction
Editing a record in Visualforce
Adding error messages to field inputs
Adding error messages to nonfield inputs
Using field sets
Adding a custom lookup to a form
Adding a custom datepicker to a form
Retrieving fields when a lookup is populated
Breaking up forms with action regions
The "Please wait" spinner
Avoiding validation errors with action regions
Action chaining
Errors – harmful if swallowed
4
Managing Records
Managing Records
Introduction
Styling fields as required
Styling table columns as required
Attaching an image to a record
Managing attachments
Maintaining custom settings
Refreshing record details from embedded Visualforce
Using wrapper classes
Changing options based on the user input
Changing page layout based on the user input
Form-based searching
5
Managing Multiple Records
Managing Multiple Records
Introduction
Preventing duplicates by searching before creating
Editing a record and its parent
Managing a list of records
Converting a lead
Managing a hierarchy of records
Inline-editing a record from a list
Creating a Visualforce report
Loading records asynchronously
6
Visualforce Charts
Visualforce Charts
Introduction
Creating a bar chart
Creating a line chart
Customizing a chart
Adding multiple series
Creating a stacked bar chart
Adding a third axis
Embedding a chart in a record view page
Multiple charts per page
7
JavaScript
JavaScript
Introduction
Using action functions
Avoiding race conditions
The confirmation dialog
Pressing Enter to submit
Tooltips
The character counter
The onload handler
Collapsible list elements
The scrolling news ticker
Carousel messages
Hiding buttons on submit
Client-side validation
Trapping navigation away
8
Force.com Sites
Force.com Sites
Introduction
Creating a site
Record and field access
Retrieving content from Salesforce
Web to lead form
Creating a website template
Adding a header menu to a template
Adding a sidebar to a template
Conditional rendering in templates
9
jQuery Mobile
jQuery Mobile
Introduction
Mobilizing a Visualforce page
Navigation and transitions
Adding a navigation bar
Working with dialogs
Listing records
Mobile Visualforce forms
Redirecting to the mobile page based on the browser
Storing the user's location
Scanning the QR code to access the page
Index
Index

The character counter

A number of field types allow a set number of characters to be entered, for example, text area and long text area. A useful addition to the user interface for these fields is a mechanism to inform the user how many more characters they may enter.

In this recipe we will create a Visualforce page that allows a user to create a case. The subject standard field can contain a maximum of 255 characters. A counter of the number of characters remaining is displayed beneath the Subject input field. The character counter is updated when the user types a character, or if they cut or paste information from or to the field.

Getting ready

This recipe uses the jQuery (http://jquery.com/) JavaScript framework to handle the client-side events. The JavaScript file is included from the Google Hosted Libraries content delivery network rather than being uploaded as a Salesforce static resource, as this makes it straightforward to move to a new version simply by changing the URL of the included...

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