Introduction to Apex for Developers

Editor's Notes

• #7: Originally these sessions were timed for 2.5 hours. We have an hour less, bringing us to only be able to do up to the point where we do a trigger.
• #9: Cover the agenda only as the use case will be described in a later slide.
• #10: Cover the agenda only as the use case will be described in a later slide.
• #11: This project is a 3-4 hour project. We will make a start and cover some basic Apex functionality. Most of this will be copy/paste, but we will review the code and discuss and cover questions.
• #12: If you've not done so already please sign up for a free developer edition org. They should create a brand new DE org if they have not done so recently. They should not use a Trial, Sandbox or Production org. Emphasize our DE orgs are free and do not expire (they are not product trials)
• #13: Key Takeaway: Traditional app development is time consuming, with many steps that have to be managed. App cloud offers managed services that remove these steps, making it possible to build more apps, faster. Talk Track: App Cloud gives you everything you need to build apps fast and get started right away, right out of the box. Instead of buying and setting up hardware, software, networking, and piecing together a dev stack, you can focus on solving the business problem. App Cloud your fastest path from idea to app, meaning that you can now build all of the apps your business needs.
• #14: Animate top to bottom
• #15: The features we will build will automatically be available to the Salesforce1 mobile app. Explain high points of Salesforce1 Completely configurable Mobile solution for internal/employee facing apps
• #16: This workshop covers the programmatic side, but before you start coding, it's always a good idea to ask yourself if what you are about to code can't be done declaratively. i.e Do I need to write that trigger, or can the same thing be done using a workflow?
• #17: This workshop covers the programmatic side, but before you start coding, it's always a good idea to ask yourself if what you are about to code can't be done declaratively. i.e Do I need to write that trigger, or can the same thing be done using a workflow?
• #18: Much of what you need to do for a Salesforce project will be done with the point-and-click configuration of the org. Coding is done when you need more flexibility than the point-and-click features allow.
• #19: We’re going to go through adding in programmatic functionality to an installed schema for a conference management app. This demo app manages a conference in a similar way to how we run Dreamforce—objects for sessions, speakers, and automation for session management.
• #20: If you didn't finish, please sign up. And install the package for the app data model. I've now tested that this package will pass both of the first two challenges in the conference management app
• #22: Stuff that will feel familiar to people. Trying to speak of broadly important architectural attributes of the language. Most of this will be straightforward. Tenant-secure In a multi tenant system, code must execute in a way that distinguishes the tenant (org/customer) that the code is executing for. This is completely built-in to the Apex runtime context. It is impossible to execute Apex code that accidentally accesses data from another tenant. If you need to access data from another Salesforce environment via Apex, you can, but you must use the standard public API for that environment using a user and session for that environment, after authorizing against that other environment. There are other integration mechanism like Salesforce Connect or S2S, too, but these also require some kind of authorization. Apex can't cross the boundary between orgs without being authorized first.
• #23: Points for each of these: Not Stand-alone You can't just write a new app with Apex. Apex fires when certain system events invoke it. As such, the language is tightly coupled with the environment, working with objects, fields, and other artifacts represented in metadata. As such, without a full representation of the environment you cannot execute meaningful code without the full picture of the environment. Server-only compiled Because of the first point, there is no compiling Apex outside of the environment either. Governor Limits Every computer system has limits on resources (memory, cpu, db connections, etc.). In a multi tenant system, these must be metered so that no one tenant causes pain to another tenant because of bad customizations. In the Apex runtime context we do this with governor limits: execution limits metered on each transaction. I like to talk to developers about Apex being a "JVM-Based Salesforce DSL".
• #24: Apex is very Java like. It also has some features that resemble C#.
• #25: Apex is very Java like. It also has some features that resemble C#.
• #26: Poll the audience about their experience level with Apex before walking through this slide so you know how deep you need to talk about it Points that could be called out: Public class – what it means, could be public with sharing (and what that means) Variable declaration (public, data type, instance variable name) and a getter (allows your VF page to get this value to display it) and a setter (allows your VF page to set the value from a form) Method Similar syntax to Java, right? The only thing missing from this sample is a constructor which is optional for being able to initialize values
• #27: Note: you don't need to know all of these or even read them. The point here is that there is an ecosystem of developers building tools for developers. You have a lot of options for development environments… The Developer Console is a comprehensive suite of developer tools that is included with your DE and doesn’t require any software downloads. There are also a lot of open source projects that exist with a great set of tools like the Force.com IDE on eclipse or the MavensMate plugin for Sublime… If you prefer to use the command line, the Force CLI has a lot of helpful tools for being able the import/export data and do migrations from a command line
• #28: For the exercises today we’re going to use the Developer Console…that way you don't have to have anything installed.
• #29: For our first hands on exercise we’re going to need to install the custom schema package which will include all of the custom objects for our conference management app. We’re going to create an email manager class and execute that Apex anonymously to see how it works.
• #31: Why do we have SOQL and this different syntax to change data? (I think) because SOQL predates Apex and existed to support API calls long before Apex existed.
• #32: Lets walk through the anatomy of a SOQL statement… This is the most basic form of a SOQL statement and you can see it looks a lot like SQL. You query for a set of records, specify which fields you want to grab values for, and then specify the Salesforce object that you’re trying to query
• #33: But SOQL has limits, and will throw an error if you are trying to query too big of a data set. You can start narrowing down the result set by adding a WHERE clause
• #34: The WHERE clause can be a concatenation of multiple logical expressions, like in this case where we are looing for a contact who has a defined phone number and the name is like the string ‘rose’. The percent symbols before and after is like placing a wildcard where text could come before or after rose. Melrose and Roselyn would both fit into this category.
• #35: Lists in Salesforce can be ordered and indexed, so you can specify how you would like to order it right from within the query
• #36: And again, coming back to limits. You can specify a limit on your records returned.
• #37: You can also query for fields on the parent object through a relationship field. If this were a custom object you were traversing, like Session__c for example, you would need to use Session__r.FieldName to traverse through the relationship field to grab the parent’s field values.
• #38: You can also go the opposite way and grab all related child records and their associated field values.
• #39: You can copy and paste one of the SOQL statements above into the Query Editor, or come up with one on the fly. Other samples here: https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/developer-relations/2013/05/basic-soql-relationship-queries.html If you have a sample aggregate query, join, or common practice feel free to use your own sample! Aggregate Sample: AggregateResult ClosedWonOpptys = [select SUM(Amount) totalRevenue, CALENDAR_MONTH(CloseDate) theMonth, COUNT(Name) numOpps                                    from Opportunity                                    where AccountId =: acctId                                    and StageName = 'Closed Won'                                    and CALENDAR_MONTH(CloseDate) =: thisMonth                                    GROUP BY CALENDAR_MONTH(CloseDate) LIMIT 1];
• #40: You can directly assign SOQL query returned single values and collections to variables in Apex. Return types for SOQL are List of sObject, sObject, or Integer. When you use inline SOQL, your query will be type checked at compile time.
• #41: You can assign returned SOQL query set to a collection variable You can use variables as control variables for your WHERE clause
• #42: Variables can be single values or collections of sets or lists
• #43: You can also directly use a SOQL statement in a for loop or a return statement on a method
• #44: If questions arise about which to use mention flexibility of the method for transaction control (all_or_none true/false). There is a lot of dml we are not covering: upsert, undelete, setSavePoint, rollback, convert (for lead),
• #46: There are multiple syntactical ways you can create records. Every sobject has a constructor that will accept a variant number of input parameters that map to the fields of that object.
• #47: You must have an Id field value for update. If it comes up, you can mention upsert, but in that instance Id is not required if you have an external id field value.
• #48: If you want to mention where is the ID? That it is implicit in SOQL when using in Apex. (Not the same as in the API…API will only query exactly the fields you specify. You can demo this in the query tool in Developer Console (which uses the API).
• #50: Leah, add to this as you see fit, or remove what you don't want to talk about
• #54: We are IT professionals and never shy away from making up words when we need to. Best practice for triggers is to BULKIFY! Best practice: don’t do SOQL statements or DML operations inside of a for loop Work with collections of data in lists, sets, or maps and limit API calls Old: data values before this current transaction New: new values being updated for this transaction
• #55: Walk through building this trigger Why is it afgter insert? Loops through a potential single to large set of records depending on whether or not it was a data load of multiple records Trigger.new Bulkified! Insert outside of the for loop
• #56: Why is it before? (you don’t want to go into an infinite loop modifying an account and if you want to compare against an old value, you need to use a before trigger for access to the oldMap
• #57: But what about the principle of click first, then code?
• #60: Leah, add to this as you see fit, or remove what you don't want to talk about
• #66: When building custom pages, Visualforce uses the MVC design pattern which is the most commonly used design paradigm in all of enterprise computing. It allows you to tackle each facet of the application development separately, while allowing each member to interoperate
• #67: you’ll notice metadata is in the model, view, and controller. This is because the platform creates, abides by, and uses the rich metadata attached to every object and programmatic component. To start at the base, or your model, this is your data and configurations around those objects. When coding on Force.com, in order to pull that data onto a web page for an end user to view, you need a controller to control your view-model interaction. These will also control how the page works, and how it interacts again with the database and could be a standard controller (no apex) or a custom controller or controller extension (apex). Finally, to build a view, you can create a Visualforce page when the standard page layout doesn’t meet your needs.
• #69: Simplest VF page Always has a page tag as the first/last line This uses a global user instance variable to grab the logged in users info
• #70: Standard controller can be both a standard object and a custom object All inputs an actions must happen within a form tag The save method uses the standard controller to create/save a contact If there were a contact Id in the url, the page would know to pre-populate the inputs with the appropriate field values to be saved/updated
• #73: Yelp page Twitter bootstrap and visualforce: https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/developer-relations/2014/03/twitter-bootstrap-and-visualforce-in-minutes.html
• #79: The main thing to call out here is the parameter for the standard controller in the constructor Also call out how it assigns the standard controller to an ApexPages.StandardController variable that can be used throughout the entire class Also, to use the individual record grabbed by the standard controller through the Id field in the URL that accessed the page, you need to caste the Sobject type to the standardController object type
• #83: The main purpose of this class is just to show that the controller has totally custom functionality, and when you don’t have another standard or custom controller and this is the primary (and solo) controller, you no longer are required to have a constructor
• #96: Intro: Our leading application, Sales Cloud, is now reinvented as Sales Cloud Lightning. Notes: Sales Cloud Lightning is the first step in connecting to your customer in a whole new way. You can sell the way you want- With over 20 new components, you can use on you can use on top of your metadata & existing sales cloud data, along with a robust ecosystem and app exchange that will transform the way you sell. We are very excited to welcome SteelBrick to the Salesforce family, now you can Sell faster with a complete quote to cash solution all within the Lightning experience. You can sell smarter with SalesforceIQ, our intelligent email app and our Sales wave app. Sales Wave is the best analytics for sales cloud users. It’s an easy to use application designed for sales professionals. All of your sales cloud data turned in to KPIs so you can make smarter decisions. And of course you can sell from anywhere with our Salesforce1 Mobile app, with all of your sales cloud data at your fingertips.
• #97: Intro: Our leading application, Sales Cloud, is now reinvented as Sales Cloud Lightning. Notes: Sales Cloud Lightning is the first step in connecting to your customer in a whole new way. You can sell the way you want- With over 20 new components, you can use on you can use on top of your metadata & existing sales cloud data, along with a robust ecosystem and app exchange that will transform the way you sell. We are very excited to welcome SteelBrick to the Salesforce family, now you can Sell faster with a complete quote to cash solution all within the Lightning experience. You can sell smarter with SalesforceIQ, our intelligent email app and our Sales wave app. Sales Wave is the best analytics for sales cloud users. It’s an easy to use application designed for sales professionals. All of your sales cloud data turned in to KPIs so you can make smarter decisions. And of course you can sell from anywhere with our Salesforce1 Mobile app, with all of your sales cloud data at your fingertips.