programming

Voodoo – A Todo list that demos the power of KnockoutJS

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This small demo app will demonstrate the usage and power of JavaScript MVC frameworks and in particular KnockoutJS. You can learn more about the framework through the tutorials on the KO site. I will gloss over some of the details but you can learn more in framework documentation. My goal here is to give you a high-level sense of what’s possible. The picture along side shows what we’re building. You can find the demo here and the full sourcecode here. The HTML Strictly speaking jQuery is not required for KO to work but it is likely that you will often include it as a helper for the framework. As alway you need to start with the static resource inclusions. [code language=”html”] <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/knockout-2.0.0.js"></script> [/code] And you’ll need a form in order to create new todo items. [code language=”html”] <form data-bind="submit: addTask" id="create-todo"> <input class="new-todo" data-bind="value: newTaskText" …

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The rise of JavaScript and it’s impact on software architecture

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MVC and it’s siblings have been around for a while and developers are comfortable bathing in the warm light of their maturity and wide-spread advocation. However, a few years ago developers started doing more of their coding client-side and as a natural consequence the lines between M, V and C became blurred leaving many of us cold and uncomfortable when trying to explain where the architectural puzzle pieces belong.

I’m sure you’ve had a similar experience. Anyone who’s used jQuery, for example, has been in the uncomfortable situation where controller code now exists within view and even worse these two are tightly coupled by virtue of jQuery selectors. To make matters more complicated if you’ve ever used class-names for application state or .data() then you’re model, view and controller are now more tightly bound than the figures in a Kamasutra carving.

This is not a new problem but the solution(s) are quite new to me and so I thought I’d share my experiences.

jQuery is Great. But…

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Ruby, Rails & RVM woes

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I’ve had several issues over the past day pertaining to Ruby, Rails and RVM and all of them were caused by one silly thing. Problem 1: You can’t swap between Ruby versions using RVM If you can’t swap between Ruby versions that you know you’ve installed then you’ve probably installed something using “sudo”. It is highly recommended that you install & use RVM in the single user mode as this is easiest. If you do this then all the versions of Ruby etc. that you install will be installed in your home directory (usually ~/.rvm/) instead of system wide and this negates a whole bunch of complexities. Running this command will tell you which ruby executable you’re using: [code language=”bash”] which ruby [/code] If the executable is not sitting in your home directory e.g. it’s in /usr/local/bin then you’re in a spot of bother. The easiest way I’ve found to …

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Across the Pond with Jason Venable aka TehNrd

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Today I start a series of posts that’ll appear here and on the Tquila blog. The series will be in the format of Q&A with some of the finest Salesforce.com and Force.com evangelists, admins and developers. I’m starting with Jason Venable aka TehNrd and I’ll let him introduce himself. Q: Tell me a bit about yourself. How long have you worked with the CRM vs the Force.com Platform? Were you always a developer? A: My name is Jason Venable. I am 27 years old. I live in Seattle, Washington, USA. Oh, wait, you want something more interesting, got it. I’ve been working with salesforce.com CRM for a little over 4 years. Three of these years have also been working with force.com. All of this time has been administering and developing for a large enterprise salesforce.com deployment at F5 Networks. A lot of what I do is merging the two worlds …

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Cloud Computing – A Programmer’s Implementation of Hardware and Software Infrastructure?

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Yes, it’s a sweeping statement, and the comparison I’ll make probably doesn’t fill every nook and cranny but it’s just so darn tasty that I had to quickly knock something out. I think that the developer collective have a massive influence over the direction of software evolution, and therefore it’s underlying technologies. In times gone past the influence probably wasn’t so large (or was it Mr Turing?), but with the rise and rise of the Socially Networked era I think the effect has snowballed. So where is my justification? Well it lies primarily in anecdote – yes yes I hear your nerdy cries you sons & daughters of empirical science, but hear me out m’kay. We, the developers, spend probably more time online than even an opposite-sex obsessed teen does on facebook (yes, I know it’s part of the internet). We search and we scrounge, getting easily bored and looking for the …

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Salesforce: Programmatically Populating Sample Data Post-Deployment

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I’m not sure if this concept is obvious when reading my previous post, so I thought I’d run through it with a specific example.

Rule one of packaging – Finish your bolognese first!

Let’s say that you’ve created what can only be described as an exemplary application in the form of a Managed Package. Although your user interface is beyond compare, you’d also like to populate some of your core objects with example data. Some options that immediately spring to mind are:

  1. Get the person that installs the package to call you, and you can do it post-installation.
  2. Get the person that installs the package to create sample data manually post-installation.
  3. Give the user a “Start Here” page with a call-to-action – such as a commandButton – that fetches the data from some API and parses into object data.

Option 3 is pretty excellent, especially now that you can package Remote Site Settings but I think we can do one better. And when I say better I mean simpler and with fewer potential points of failure.

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Salesforce: Enhanced Custom Settings

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Okay book’s done, now where were we? Oh yes software development, right? Programming software engineering application development h4x0R-ing. Oh how I’ve missed getting my mitts dirty so without further ado…

Now this one goes right about... here!

Some time back Custom Settings were introduced on the Force.com Platform and we all star-jumped in the air, w00ting to anyone who would listen. Up till this point – if you’re anything like me – you were using custom objects to hold configuration data, whether this be lists of language-codes, or operational settings such at outbound web service endpoints, usernames, passwords etc. With Custom Settings you finally had a place to put this information – a home if you will – for your lonely, orphaned Control Data.

Quite quickly however I realised there was still a gaping hole that could be filled with Custom Settings but just didn’t feel right. Lists of data (such as currency codes and descriptions) fit really well into this structure but more serious Control Data that you only need to be listed once-off (such as important URLs, flags to active/deactive modules in your application, usernames and passwords) just don’t seem like they really belong with this other crowd. A quick list of reasons highlights this:

  • Control Data is typically entered once off and creating an entire Custom Setting for a single line of data feels like a waste.
  • Custom Settings are data so they can’t be deployed with code, they must be created after the fact. Control Data should be a little more important than regular data, it needs a smarter vehicle than plain-old data entry.
  • If you’re creating packages you want as much autonomy for your clients as possible. If you use custom settings there will have to be that “Create data in Custom Setting X__c” step in each and every deployment.

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Salesforce Unit Tests & Code Coverage

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Unit testing *sigh*. Oh how they vex me. If they weren’t so important (and required) I’d just skip the lot, but they are and so we – champions of software development – must press on in the face of dreary complexity; we will not back down, we will not surrender, we will look that CRT/LCD screen in the pixels and say, “Untested units, you will not defeat me!”.

Diving into the thick of things, the most common question seems to be, “Why can’t I get code coverage for my entire class?!”. The trick here is to think like a runtime engine, and consider how you might journey through all possible testing paths. Now I never said it’s easy, but with a bit of practice (and 8 truck loads of patience) you’ll get there. Let’s look at some common cases.

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Salesforce Unit Tests & Code Coverage

by

Unit testing *sigh*. Oh how they vex me. If they weren’t so important (and required) I’d just skip the lot, but they are and so we – champions of software development – must press on in the face of dreary complexity; we will not back down, we will not surrender, we will look that CRT/LCD screen in the pixels and say, “Untested units, you will not defeat me!”.

Diving into the thick of things, the most common question seems to be, “Why can’t I get code coverage for my entire class?!”. The trick here is to think like a runtime engine, and consider how you might journey through all possible testing paths. Now I never said it’s easy, but with a bit of practice (and 8 truck loads of patience) you’ll get there. Let’s look at some common cases.

Read more