Archive for the ‘VisualForce’ Category
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,
Multiple forms in a single VisualForce page
I thought I’d post a quick tip I picked up from Jill Wetzler, Visualforce(and, I suspect JavaScript) Legend. When developing pages that contain more than a single area that could be submitted(not necessarily refreshed) I would usually wrap these areas with forms. Jill pointed out that I’d been a silly bloke(my words, not hers) and could use a single form and wrap each area with an<apex:actionregion> tag. Read the rest of this entry »
OOP in the Salesforce Cloud – ReCaptcha Revisited
Can I get a OOP OOP?! That’s right folks, OOP is alive and well on the Force.com platform, and over the past few months I’ve had some pretty thrilling experiences implementing projects using those trusted sidekicks Encapsulation, Polymorphism and trusty ol’ Abstraction. There is some pretty sweet documentation on the subject, but I thought I’d demo something supercool I learnt by combining two articles from the Force.com wiki. Read the rest of this entry »
Passing Apex values to Javascript Code.
For the sake of completeness, and because I’ve received a large number of hits from the googled phrase ‘pass apex to javascript’, I thought it would be appropriate for me to write an article detailing the converse of an operation explain in a previous post. Read the rest of this entry »
Passing Javascript values to Apex code.
It’s been a while crocodile. Truth be told I was working furiously on my Site’s Developer Challenge entry, and then I was just too pooped to post. I’m sure you were all waiting with bated breath for my next post.. nooooot.
Anyway, let’s get down to brass tacks. Quite often I’ve needed to manipulate variable values in-page(Visualforce) with JS, and then pass these modified values to Apex or a Standard Controller. Just as often I’ve simply dismissed the possibility and worked-around the issue. Recently I was speaking to a fellow who proposed the beginnings of a terribly smashing idea and thought I’d try my hand at a simple implementation. Read the rest of this entry »
Formatting Salesforce OutputText
Quite recently I came across an interesting forum post by XactiumBen that mentioned some awesomesauce abilities of params in outputTexts. I’ve written an article detailing the basics of this functionality before, and thought I’d document these advanced capabilities too. For anyone interested you can read Part 1 here.
Now I’m sure some of you thought that simply being able to use dynamic custom labels was pretty smashing in it’s own right, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. Imagine a world where you could not only use dynamic custom labels, but were also able to use decision structures in those labels. That’s the world we live in buddy! Read the rest of this entry »
Meaningful Error Messages #94
This one is a hoot,
Sneezy.Capex, what a cute name.
The number of question marks in the error message scares me a bit so I may take an early lunch and try to forget about it. Solution pending.
The Silver Lining 