Apex

A quick post to share some thoughts on the standardisation of naming conventions applied to Custom Settings. With Custom Objects it is an obvious best practice to mirror exactly the conventions applied by the Standard Objects, there are no reasons not to adhere to this approach, none. With Custom Settings however there is no comparable […]

The concept of any-org development is an interesting one. The strict definition, to my mind, being the development of a set of components (perhaps packaged) that are designed and coded specifically to install and function in any Salesforce org. This is typically an ISV concern, where testing and maintaining a single-code base can be highly […]

Understanding how the Salesforce Query Optimiser (SQO) works is fundamental to delivering performance at the data layer. Good practice in this regard, as part of an optimised physical data model implementation, is key to delivering efficient data access at the application layer. In short, certain fields are indexed by default, custom indexes can be added […]

My first post on this blog back in March 2012 related to Simulated Breakpoints, a developer console feature enabling a head dump to be captured when code execution hit a specified line(s) of Apex script. Whilst not comparable to the power of breakpoints in debugging with other languages, Simulated Breakpoints was a definitely step forward […]

I’m a big advocate of setting out the key elements of the development process succinctly but unambiguously at the start of a software development project, particularly in cases where I have no prior history of working with the development team. Such process elements typically cover environments, coding standards, technical design and review requirements, source-code control […]

Interesting new book covering advanced Apex topics such as execution context, asynchronous programming, robust design patterns and so on.. Excellent addition to the Force.com Developer’s arsenal! Advanced Apex Programming – Author: Dan Appleman Table of Contents Update (2012-09-10) I now have my hands on this book and have to say I’m really impressed. So often […]

There may be cases where a pessimistic locking strategy makes sense within your custom Apex script, for example the available inventory statistic on a Stock record may need to be locked while your code works out the correct value to decrement. The interesting, but rarely used SOQL keyword “FOR UPDATE” can be applied to SOQL […]

For experienced developers, the lack of reflection capabilities in the Apex language can be a limitation in the type of patterns that can be ported from other languages (Java, C# etc.). With Summer 12, the Type class now supports the newInstance method, enabling instantiation via the class name as a string. Sounds simple, but this […]

As of the Summer ’12 release FieldSets can be accessed through Dynamic Apex (or Apex Describe). Remember, FieldSets are admin configured arbitrary groupings of fields, added on the object detail page within setup. With the upcoming release, controller code can now dynamically build a soql query that retrieves the data for the fields in the […]

The code below provides an example of a page action method used to detect a mobile user-agent and perform redirection. Alternatively the same approach could be used with dynamic Visualforce components to switch between mobile/web optimised page composition. [sourcecode language=”java”] public PageReference redirectDevice(){ String userAgent = ApexPages.currentPage().getHeaders().get(‘USER-AGENT’); //& some devices use custom headers for the […]