joe-ferraro.com » visualforce

lookup –> picklist

joe — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:47:14 +0000

I’ve had several clients “voice concerns” about Salesforce.com’s lookup functionality relative to user acceptance. Well, if you’re dealing with a relatively simple lookup table, you can override an object’s new/edit page with a Visualforce page and display the lookup field to the user as a picklist.

In the [live Visualforce] example below, the user is creating a new “Some_Object__c” record. The Some_Object__c object is very simple: it’s comprised of a standard name field and a custom lookup to another table called “Location__c”. Location__c is comprised of name, city, and state fields and there are only 8 rows in the table. Rather than having the user click the magnifying glass icon to lookup to the Location__c table, one can quite easily display a list of possible values to the user along with any other pertinent information (in this case, I’m displaying Location__c’s City__c and State__c fields as well).


public class SomeObjectExtension {
	private final ApexPages.standardController controller;
	private final Some_Object__c obj;

	public SomeObjectExtension(ApexPages.StandardController stdController) {
		this.controller = stdController;
		this.obj = (Some_Object__c)stdController.getRecord();
	}

	public SelectOption[] getLocationOptions() {
		SelectOption[] locations = new SelectOption[]{};
		locations.add(new SelectOption('','--None--'));
		for (Location__c l : [select id, name, city__c, state__c from location__c where isdeleted = false order by name]) {
			locations.add(new SelectOption(l.id, l.name + ' (' + l.city__c + ', ' + l.state__c + ')'));
		}
		return locations;
	}
}

extjs & visualforce (part 2), JSON this time

joe — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:45:14 +0000

Let me preface this post by stating that the following is merely a proof of concept and should not necessarily be implemented into a production org. The pagination demonstrated below is not fit for large datasets and may result in unexpected behavior!

Rich Waters’ comment on my first post re: Ext JS & visualforce got me thinking about the possibilities of leveraging JSON in Ext JS components within Visualforce, so I implemented a paging grid, similar to this example provided by Ext JS. OK, enough of the formalities, I suppose people want to see what kind of development ensued:

First, the product, a JSON-based Ext JS paging grid:

Now, for the magic behind the grid, the JSON file (a Visualforce page called “Json_test”):

The controller (spits out the JSON):


public class Json_File {

	public string json {get;set;}

	public Json_File() {
        opportunity[] opps = new opportunity[]{};

	integer start = 0;
	integer pageSize = 10;

	if (ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get('start') != null &amp;amp;amp;&amp;amp;amp; ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get('limit') != null) {
		start = integer.valueof(ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get('start'));
		pageSize = integer.valueof(ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get('limit'));
	}

        string jsonRecordsString = '';

        integer i = 1;
        integer j = 0;

        for (Opportunity o : [Select id, name, stagename, closedate from opportunity order by name limit 1000]) {
			if (j >= start) {
				if (i <= pageSize) {
					jsonRecordsString += '{';
					jsonRecordsString += '"id":' + '"'+o.id+'",';
					jsonRecordsString += '"name":' + '"'+o.name+'",';
					jsonRecordsString += '"stagename":' + '"'+o.stagename+'",';
					jsonRecordsString += '"closedate":' + '"'+o.closedate+'"';
					jsonRecordsString += '},';
					i++;
				}
			}
			opps.add(o);
			j++;
        }

		string jsonString = '({"total":"'+opps.size()+'", "results":[' + jsonRecordsString + ']})';
        jsonString = jsonString.replaceAll(',]',']');
        this.json = jsonString;
	}
}

Finally, the grid itself (from the Visualforce page embedded above in this post):

*It’s important to note that this Visualforce page does not have a controller; the JsonStore provides the reference needed (url) [see below] to access the future backend of the grid.

As you can see, the Json_File controller accepts two params (start, pageSize), which are sent from the store in store.load() to manage the index of the query and the number of records returned. Unfortunately, Salesforce does not provide an “INDEX” keyword in SOQL, which would make this pagination much more “resource respectful” (each time page up/page down is called from the paging grid, we receive a full dataset from Salesforce which, as you might guess, can be dangerous for tables with more than a thousand records).

I looked into the possibility of leveraging StandardSetController, but given the out-of-box architecture of the paging grid, we’d still be calling our JSON controller each time the grid was “paged”, which effectively calls the entire dataset.

I’m open to ideas, so please weigh in.

EDIT: the source for the above example…
ExtJs_Json_Grid.page
Json_Controller.cls
Json_test.page

extjs & visualforce

joe — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:20:59 +0000

I’m interested to hear how people are utilizing extjs in their visualforce pages. I’ve found it very helpful to use Apex to generate the store on the server side, then pass it along to the Visualforce page via a hidden input to be handled on the client side (rather than use the apex:repeat tags).

Note: once again, the grid below is a live Visualforce page from my developer Force.com site embedded into this post


public class Grid_Controller {
	public string store {get;set;}
	public list queueitems {get;set;}
	string userId = UserInfo.getUserId();

	public Grid_Controller() {
		queueitems = new queueitem[]{};
		for (Custom_Process_Instance__c cpi : [Select Owner.Name, Opportunity__r.Name, Opportunity__r.Id, (Select Id From Custom_Process_Instance_Step__r where Status__c != 'Completed' AND Status__c = 'Pending' limit 1), Percent_Complete__c, Process_Age__c from Custom_Process_Instance__c where Status__c = 'Pending' AND Opportunity__c != null and IsDeleted = false order by CreatedDate asc]) {
            		QueueItem qi = new QueueItem(cpi);
            		queueitems.add(qi);
		}        

		string myDataString = 'var myData = [ ';
		for(queueitem q : this.queueitems) {
			string showIcon = '';
			if (q.ProcessInstance.Custom_Process_Instance_Step__r.size() == 1)
        			showIcon = 'yes';

			string oppId = q.ProcessInstance.Opportunity__c;
			string oppName = q.ProcessInstance.Opportunity__r.Name;
			string launchedby = q.ProcessInstance.Owner.Name;
			double percent = q.ProcessInstance.Percent_Complete__c;
			double ageInMinutes = q.ProcessInstance.Process_Age__c;

			if (q.ProcessInstance.Opportunity__r.Name != null)
				oppName = string.escapeSingleQuotes(q.ProcessInstance.Opportunity__r.Name);
			if (q.ProcessInstance.Owner.Name != null)
				launchedBy = string.escapeSingleQuotes(q.ProcessInstance.Owner.Name);

			myDataString += '[\''+showIcon+'\',\''+oppName+'\', \''+oppId+'\',\''+launchedBy+'\',\''+percent+'\',\''+ageInMinutes+'\'],';
		}

		myDataString += '];';
		myDataString = myDataString.replace(',];', '];');
		this.store = myDataString;
	}

	public class QueueItem {
		public Custom_Process_Instance__c ProcessInstance {get;set;}
		public QueueItem(Custom_Process_Instance__c cpi) {
			this.ProcessInstance = cpi;
		}
	}
}

wrapper class and force.com sites

joe — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:17:05 +0000

Force.com Sites was announced last week at Dreamforce ‘08 and what a game changing announcement it was. Here’s my foray into Sites development, with nifty sample code (please note the table of opportunity data below is a live Salesforce.com Visualforce page from my development environment embedded into this post):

Controller


public class OpportunityList_Controller {
	public class MyOpportunity {
	    Opportunity o;
	    public MyOpportunity(Opportunity opp) { o = opp; }
	    public Opportunity getOpportunity(){ return o; }

	    public String getColor()  {
		    if (o.Probability < 25) return '#2A73F0';
		    else if (o.Probability >= 25 &amp;&amp; o.Probability <= 75) return '#E0B60D';
		    else if (o.Probability > 75) return '#FF0000';
		    else return '#000000';
	    }
    }

    public List results = new List{};

	public List getOpportunities() {
		results.clear();
        for (Opportunity o : [Select Id, Name, StageName, Closedate, Probability
From Opportunity where StageName != 'Closed Won' order by Name limit 20]) {
        	results.add(new MyOpportunity(o));
        }
		return results;
    }
}

Visualforce Page



	
		
			
			
				
					Opportunity Name
					
					{!o.Opportunity.Name}

visualforce autocomplete component

joe — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:29:30 +0000

I saw this on the boards and I wanted to make sure everyone knew it was out there.

http://www.jonathanrm.com/blog/?p=12