Archive for the ‘VisualForce’ Category
Formatting – PageBlockSectionItem, InputField & OutPutField
There are a collection of forum posts asking why VisualForce formatting isn’t being applied correctly to PageBlockSectionItems and/or InputFields, and the answer isn’t immediately obvious so let’s see what we can throw together. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Masking Input on VisualForce Pages
I am a developer and (at least as often) a (l)user. UI and UX design are important from both perspectives, and it’s important to bear this in mind whilst creating any application. What is this waffle all about? There are some platforms, based in yonder cloud that could tweak the tiniest of features, and make the lives of their users (and administrators) 1 x shed-load better. Until they do that, we’re gonna have to do it ourselves.
Let’s get specific. Typically, validation error messages provided by Apex and VisualForce are only apparent after form is submitted ( or when we’re on the last page of a 39-page wizard ). Of course some cases require that it be this way, but for other cases it’s like my (very) old professor used to say, “Jus’ don’t let em make the mistake in the first place boy *tongue-click*”. Heeding Prof. Swart’s advice, let’s see how we can easily do this. Read the rest of this entry »
Howto: Communicate between template- and inner- pages.
This post is as much about me asking a question as it is about providing a solution, so don’t let me down community. I got your back, but you’ve got to scratch mine too.. A little to the left, ah yeah, that’s it. The topics in question here are page templates, their controllers, and the pages (and the controllers) that use the template. But first let’s start with what I’ve discovered.
I like using page templates, they make my life easier. If I’m creating a site I probably want to have some consistency of navigation, page header, search etc. across all my web pages. So let’s assume I have the following setup:
1. A VisualForce page I use as a template.
2. A controller for this page that handles navigation, searching etc.
3. Several ‘inner’ VisualForce pages that use this template.
4. A controller for each of these pages. Read the rest of this entry »
DML currently not allowed
This almost belongs in my sarcastically titled, “Meaningful Error Messages ..” series, but as it has traceable causes, I thought I’d write something up on it’s most frequent causes (I meant to write this up a few months ago, but it slipped my mind (find it in your heart to forgive an ol’ developer) and now I think it’s time the world knew).
‘DML currently not allowed’, what could that mean? Well it means that DML isn’t allowed. And that it’s not allowed right now, but with the slight promise that given time, it will be allowed. Often in the past, hoping against hope, I kept on pressing that button/link/onclick-area, but the cloud never changed it’s mind. With a sigh I constructed the google-search query and began trundling through the results. Read the rest of this entry »
Flickr + jQuery + Salesforce = Awesome^5 [Part 2]
Okay software developing enthusiasts, I’m back from Paris (you didn’t know I was gone did ya?), I’m a year older and culturally, I’m richer (well I’d like to think so at least). It’s time to complete our two-part series on integrating disparate systems using the most-excellent combination of web services, jQuery and the Force.com platform. In part 1 we learnt how to connect to a third-party endpoint (Flickr in our case), and consume their SOAP-based web services. Now we’re going to jazz it all up with our spiffy jQuery gallery carousel. Let’s have another look at where we want to be at the end of this all,
