Salesforce JavaScript Remoting: Using Apex and JavaScript objects to pass data from client- to server-side and vice versa

I’ve spoken about how to do this at a high level during Cloudstock London and there are hints at how it can be done but no formal documentation that I’ve found, so here we are 🙂 Quite simply JavaScript Remoting will transform Apex objects and classes (or collections of these types) into JavaScript objects for you. The opposite is true too but there are some rules you need to observe. Apex Types to JavaScript Equivalents This is the easier of type conversions in that you don’t have to really do anything to make it happen. The code below uses a custom class that I’ve defined but you can do the same with any sObject too. Let’s have a look at the code. The Controller The Visualforce The Output JavaScript Types to Apex Equivalents This is a little tricker, especially when it comes to sObjects. Note that the approach below works for …

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Salesforce: JavaScript Remoting – a different way of thinking

  JavaScript Remoting for Apex operates in a very different paradigm from what you might be used to i.e. Visualforce pages have controllers and the two interact through action methods – where this might be a full form submission or some neat AJAX functionality. Remoting also calls controller methods but there is a gaping maw in terms of how the two work under the hood. I’ve seen a few great articles on the syntax and example usage of JavaScript Remoting for Apex but when I started using it I came across a number domain differences that weren’t documented anywhere. Hopefully my list here will help you in the learning process. The best way to describe the new way of thinking is to examine the features set in contrast to “normal” Apex and Visualforce. How JavaScript Remoting Differs Pass parameters naturally i.e. the call matches the method signature syntactically instead of …

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Salesforce: A better way to work with jQuery selectors and Visualforce Component Ids

I get very sad when discussing this particular topic. There are a variety of ways of get Visualforce component Ids and using them in JavaScript but all of them keep me awake at night. Srsly. A commenter on one of my posts got me thinking about how we can do this better and I’ve come up with a way that I think is great. Hopefully you’ll agree. This post means that my older posts here and here are now retired in favour of this method. If the world was on the brink of nuclear war with no clear path to peace what could you count on to save the day? Regular Expressions of course. If a meteor the size of Pluto was about to crash into Earth and Bruce Willis was too old to land on it and blow it up what could we count on to rid us of …

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Salesforce: Force.com Sites and Google Analytics

This is a cross-post from the Tquila blog. Not having analytics built into your public sites is much like having a Q&A site but not allowing people to answer. In this case some of the questions are: Where did you come from? How long did you stick around for? Where did you hang out on your visit? Now I’m not going to debate which set of analytics is best but I did come across a few quirks when setting Google Analytics (GA) up for wesnolte.com that I suspect are fairly universal. Build a Site This of course is quite a big step and I’m going to assume you’re just about done. To get analytics up and running though you’re going to have to do a few extra bits. Sign up for a GA account, create a Website Profile and you’ll receive an Analytics Code. My code has been blocked out …

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Announcing the Salesforce Handbook

Recently, Jeff Douglas and I saw the potential for a beginner’s book – aimed at business owners, analysts and developers, that comprehensively documents Salesforce and Force.com. There is a tonne of documentation out there and we thought “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a handbook that lightly summarised the most important areas of the platforms as well as offering some best practise advice”. We mulled it over for a time, and today we’d like to announce that we’re currently writing: The Salesforce Handbook A newcomer’s guide to building applications on Salesforce.com and the Force.com Platform. Hand-in-hand with the book we’ll be publishing content from the book on a WordPress site. Here you can expect to find excerpts from the book, but also content that supplements the book e.g. areas that’ll serve as best-practice hubs with links to official documentation, blog posts that rock the party, and even superb discussion forum …

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Client-Side VisualForce Pagination with Pajinate

Pajinated DataTable

Pagination is an essential, and not so easy to implement user interface device that allows the developer to break long lists of items, or one very long item into sub-pages. I love the challenge that pagination brings (who doesn’t really) when developing efficient and reusable server-side code, but this article isn’t about that. Sometimes I need things done quickly, easily, and preferably with as little compromise as possible, and that’s what client-side pagination is all about.

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Friends Romans Country[wo]men

In an attempt to attend DreamForce this year – I will conquer the Atlantic! – I’ve written up a white paper on a set of tools and workflows that I’ve found superb in more ways than one. I’d be happy & ecstatic(hapstatic?) if you could take a gander at my paper and, if it tickles your fancy, give it your vote. The idea itself describes the paper, but I failed to proof read it (and shock! Horror! There is no edit capability) so I’ll post a more refined version here,

Rapid application development is one of the strongest selling points of Salesforce and Force.com Platform; one that I’ve personally experienced time and time again. However, when it comes to translating that beautiful design document into a VisualForce interface, going from the design bits

The design document built from the 960.gs template

to a cross-browser, standards-compliant site prototype can be troublesome and often takes several days… and let’s be honest, potentially weeks.

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Salesforce Form Validation Enhanced

I have a dream, and in this dream form-validation is not a chore. All the nasty work is done client-side, and we – the developers – control what an error message says and where it says it! Server-side validation?! Pah, I spit in it’s general direction (but only if no ladies are present). I don’t need or want client-server round-trips.. I want speed, I want beauty, I want control; and I think you do too.

Our end goal: A neat, realtime, client-side validation technique for VisualForce.

Using either inputFields, Apex exception handling and/or the ‘required’ attribute in VisualForce, we have a number of mechanisms to deal with form-validation, but if we’re honest with ourselves, they’re the ten-thousands-spoons when all we need is a knife. I know you’ve heard me singing it’s praise from the rooftops, but yet again, jQuery is here to save the day.

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VisualForce Element Ids in jQuery selectors

I have retired this approach in favour of a much neater solution that can be found here.

This tricky topic had me puzzled for some time and in earlier posts I went the way of using CSS classes to identify DOM elements; but was always a touch dissatisfied with the solution. Not only is it less efficient – valid XHTML pages should only have one element with any Id, although CSS classes can be shared by many elements – but it also feels all hacky ‘n stuff. I’m a bit older now, a bit more experienced and I RTFM. Without further ado, here is why it’s tricky, and how to fix it.

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