Book Image

Mastering Apex Programming

By : Paul Battisson
5 (1)
Book Image

Mastering Apex Programming

5 (1)
By: Paul Battisson

Overview of this book

As applications built on the Salesforce platform are now a key part of many organizations, developers are shifting focus to Apex, Salesforce’s proprietary programming language. As a Salesforce developer, it is important to understand the range of tools at your disposal, how and when to use them, and best practices for working with Apex. Mastering Apex Programming will help you explore the advanced features of Apex programming and guide you in delivering robust solutions that scale. This book starts by taking you through common Apex mistakes, debugging, exception handling, and testing. You'll then discover different asynchronous Apex programming options and develop custom Apex REST web services. The book shows you how to define and utilize Batch Apex, Queueable Apex, and Scheduled Apex using common scenarios before teaching you how to define, publish, and consume platform events and RESTful endpoints with Apex. Finally, you'll learn how to profile and improve the performance of your Apex application, including architecture trade-offs. With code examples used to facilitate discussion throughout, by the end of the book, you'll have developed the skills needed to build robust and scalable applications in Apex.

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Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
Reviews
Learn more on Discord
1
Section 1 – Triggers, Testing, and Security
Section 1 – Triggers, Testing, and Security
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 1: Common Apex Mistakes
Chapter 1: Common Apex Mistakes
Technical Requirements
Null pointer exceptions
Retrieving configuration data in a bulkified way
Bulkification – querying within loops
Hardcoding
Summary
3
Chapter 2: Debugging Apex
Chapter 2: Debugging Apex
Technical requirements
Debugging on Salesforce
Prevention is better than a cure
Log levels
SFDX and streaming logs
Debugging using the Apex Replay Debugger
Apex Interactive Debugger
Which tool to use?
Summary
4
Chapter 3: Triggers and Managing Trigger Execution
Chapter 3: Triggers and Managing Trigger Execution
Technical Requirements
The Salesforce order of execution
Clicks and code
Trigger architecture
Using trigger handler frameworks
Summary
5
Chapter 4: Exceptions and Exception Handling
Chapter 4: Exceptions and Exception Handling
Technical Requirements
Understanding the different types of exceptions
Catching errors
Using the finally block
Exception logging
Capturing state
Using custom exception types
Summary
6
Chapter 5: Testing Apex Code
Chapter 5: Testing Apex Code
Technical Requirements
Understanding the importance of testing
Using a test data factory to create data
Loading test data using Test.loadData
Testing RESTful web services with static resources
Summary
7
Chapter 6: Secure Apex Programming
Chapter 6: Secure Apex Programming
How permissions and sharing work on Salesforce
Enforcing sharing
Sharing records using Apex
Enforcing object and field permissions
Understanding Apex class security
Enforcing permissions and security within SOQL
Avoiding SOQL injection vulnerabilities
Summary
8
Section 2 – Asynchronous Apex and Apex REST
Section 2 – Asynchronous Apex and Apex REST
9
Chapter 7: Utilizing Future Methods
Chapter 7: Utilizing Future Methods
Technical Requirements
When to use a future method
Defining future methods
Calling future methods
Testing future methods
Summary
10
Chapter 8: Working with Batch Apex
Chapter 8: Working with Batch Apex
Technical Requirements
When to use Batch Apex
Defining a Batch Apex class
Invoking Batch Apex
Monitoring Batch Apex
Testing Batch Apex
Summary
11
Chapter 9: Working with Queueable Apex
Chapter 9: Working with Queueable Apex
What is Queueable Apex?
When to use Queueable Apex
Defining Queueable Apex implementations
Invoking Queueable Apex
Testing Queueable Apex
Summary
12
Chapter 10: Scheduling Apex Jobs
Chapter 10: Scheduling Apex Jobs
Technical Requirements
When to use Scheduled Apex jobs
Defining a schedulable Apex class
Scheduling an Apex class
Testing scheduled jobs and Apex scheduling
Summary
13
Chapter 11: Using Platform Events
Chapter 11: Using Platform Events
Technical Requirements
An overview of event-driven architecture and the event bus
Exploring event-driven architecture
Subscribing to and handling platform events
Testing platform events
A discussion of the CometD protocol and handling events externally
Summary
14
Chapter 12: Apex REST and Custom Web Services
Chapter 12: Apex REST and Custom Web Services
Technical requirements
An overview of REST
Defining endpoints
Dynamic parsing using custom metadata
Testing endpoints using Workbench
Exposing endpoints
An alternative using URL Rewriter and Visualforce pages
Handling request body data
Testing Apex REST code
Summary
15
Section 3 – Apex Performance
Section 3 – Apex Performance
16
Chapter 13: Performance and the Salesforce Governor Limits
Chapter 13: Performance and the Salesforce Governor Limits
The Salesforce application request lifecycle
Governor limits and why we should embrace them
Thinking about performance
Summary
17
Chapter 14: Performance Profiling
Chapter 14: Performance Profiling
Technical Requirements
Measure twice, cut once
The OODA methodology
Profiling Apex performance
Profiling Lightning Web Components performance
Summary
18
Chapter 15: Improving Apex Performance
Chapter 15: Improving Apex Performance
Technical Requirements
Improving CPU time
Reducing heap size usage
Improving query selectivity
Number of queries
Platform Cache
Understanding when to make some of these improvements
Summary
19
Chapter 16: Performance and Application Architectures
Chapter 16: Performance and Application Architectures
Using clicks with code
Code structure and linting
Object-oriented programming in Apex
Common Salesforce architectural trade-offs
Managing long-term performance of an application
Summary
20
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Clicks and code

Before we start looking at architectural patterns and solutions to these problems, we should discuss the proverbial elephant in the room: clicks and code or clicks versus code. One of the most powerful features of the Salesforce platform is the fact that there is a wealth of low or no-code tools that can be used to get a solution up and running in a relatively short amount of time. These tools stretch from formula fields through to powerful point and click tools such as flow.

Firstly, I would like to advocate that when building using click-based tools, a number of best practices are followed that will make these solutions more scalable and manageable over time. Most importantly, we should follow these two best practices:

  • Use a single Process Builder process per object
  • Implement bulk patterns within Flow

Process Builder processes do not have a defined order of execution; that is, if you have two processes defined per object, then you cannot guarantee...

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