Salesforce Apex Master Class (Ep. 4) – What is an IDE?

What is an IDE?

Let’s review what an IDE is and why it’s so incredibly helpful to you as a developer in Salesforce and beyond. As a developer, you’re encouraged to use an IDE, since it can make your work so much easier.

An IDE is an integrated development environment, where you can combine a wide variety of development tools to do your work much faster and more efficiently every day. Now, let’s check out an example (below) of an IDE at work. This particular IDE is IntelliJ, and I’m using a plug-in that allows me to do Salesforce development called the Illuminated Cloud 2 plug-in.

Demoing the Benefits of Using an IDE

An IDE like IntelliJ here will make your life, and the lives of your developer teammates, so much easier. In this interface, I have my code editor so I can write Apex code or a lightning web component, among other things. I can also analyze debug logs here in this IDE, or even run anonymous Apex. But why should you use an IDE and not just a developer console? An IDE like IntelliJ has many features that developer consoles don’t.

The first major benefit is if you want to know everywhere that a class is used in your codebase, you can simply copy the name of the class, then press CTRL-shift-F, and then the IDE searches for the class in all of the code in your Salesforce environment. There are also a litany of other hotkeys that will make traversal through your code base considerably easier. Shortcuts like that aren’t available in the developer console.

Autocomplete is another major advantage in using an IDE like IntelliJ with Illuminated Cloud 2. You can type “system.” and the IDE knows methods are available for that system class in the Apex language. So, you it will present to you a list of autocompleted methods that you can select from and have your code auto-completed for you. By contrast, the Salesforce developer console’s auto-complete features struggle and sometimes just outright do not work. This makes it easy for programmers, like you, to know all your options without having to look them up elsewhere in documentation.

There’s even more an IDE can do for you. For example, you can enable version control, allowing you to create local backups of your code, so you can revert back if something goes wrong. You sure can’t do that in a developer console! Meanwhile, you can find more useful stuff in the settings menu too, such as setting all the defaults for code style for a specified language, such as Apex or Javascript. All that will be automatically formatted for you. You can export all this to other developers on your team too, and make everyone’s code consistent. That’s an example of the convenient, time-saving efficiency of an IDE.

Another option is to run your Apex tests in the IDE, and it will display coverage next to the classes that it tests. Yes, you can do that in developer consoles too, but an IDE like IntelliJ will conveniently show you which classes the test covered, and even break down what happened in those tests, such as line coverage. Pretty cool, huh? And this is just the start; an IDE can do a whole lot more!

To recap, an IDE like IntelliJ will make your life as a programmer faster, more convenient, more direct, more consistent, and more intuitive than ever before, acting like a souped-up developer console with more options so you can get more work done. Give it a try, and see what you can accomplish with the power of an IDE! Until next time!


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Salesforce Development Books I Recommend

Advanced Apex Programming
Salesforce Lightning Platform Enterprise Architecture
Mastering Salesforce DevOps
Apex Design Patterns Book

Good Non-SF Specific Development Books:

Clean Code
Clean Architecture
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software Book

Salesforce Development Tutorial (LWC): How to use Lightning Web Component’s in List View Buttons

Why Bother Using an LWC in a List View Button?

If you need to create some custom functionality that is accessible to your users via a list view (or potentially a related list), then a list view button is the way to go. The reason that you should prefer to utilize an LWC (despite the fact there is no obvious way to use an LWC for a list view button) is because LWC’s load faster than any other component type and, of the available list view button options, they are the most consistent with Salesforce’s Lightning Experience look and feel.

Unfortunately, while it’s super simple to setup and LWC for a list view button, Salesforce has no documentation on how to do so and virtually no answers exist for how to do this anywhere online, but NO MORE!! Today I’ll show you three different methods of creating an LWC List View button! Two methods do not allow you to send the ids of selected records in a list view and one does. I’ll give you the pros and cons of each and how to setup each one below.

One additional note, all of the below solutions will allow the user to traverse from the list view button back to the exact list view they were previously on without the help of visualforce at all! Something else that was undocumented and challenging to figure out.

DISCLAIMER: As of this writing, LWC quick actions are not usable on list views, this could change in the future however, so make sure to investigate that.


Setting up the Lightning Web Component

In any of the three scenarios we are going to use the same Lightning Web Component to demo the functionality, although in the third scenario (a flow based scenario) we will be making slight modifications to allow for the ids of records to get passed through to the component. Let’s take a look at the core of the component below (or on GitHub here).

HTML File:

<template>
	<lightning-button label="Return to List View" onclick={close}></lightning-button>
</template>

JS File:

import {LightningElement} from 'lwc';

export default class ListViewButton extends LightningElement {

	close(){
		setTimeout(
			function() {
				window.history.back();
			},
			1000
		);
	}
}

XML File:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<LightningComponentBundle xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
    <apiVersion>51.0</apiVersion>
    <description>List View Button</description>
    <isExposed>true</isExposed>
    <masterLabel>List View Button</masterLabel>
    <targets>
        <target>lightning__AppPage</target>
        <target>lightning__Tab</target>
        <target>lightning__FlowScreen</target>
    </targets>
</LightningComponentBundle>

Alright alright alright, so we have all of the files outlined above, let’s make talk about the close function in the JavaScript file first. I did an ENORMOUS amount of experimentation trying to get a list view button that spawns an LWC to allow me to traverse back to the exact list view that I had previously come from and this was the only way I could consistently get that to happen. I tried navigationmixin and it had trouble remembering where to go no matter what I did, I tried return urls, I tried a ton of junk, but that close function above does the trick every single time (at least in a browser, never tried on a mobile app). It always goes back to the exact list view I was on when I clicked the button.

So what does that function actually do? It basically looks to your browser windows history and moves back one page in time, the set timeout function allows it to take up to one second to make that happen. I would suggest using the set timeout as I had issues using this function without it, occasionally it wouldn’t have enough time to operate and failed. This however is used by thousands of users in my org now with no complaints.

The second thing I wanna go over is the XML File’s targets. For simplicity I just put every target we are going to need when we go through each of the three LWC list view button methods, that being said, you only need to declare the target for the method you choose to use. If you use the App Builder method, use the AppPage target, if you use the Tab method, use the Tab target, etc.


LWC List View Button Method 1: The Lightning App Builder Page Method

WHETHER YOU USE THIS METHOD OR NOT, READ THROUGH IT!! THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE STEPS ARE IDENTICAL FOR ALL OTHER VERSIONS SO THEY WILL ONLY BE SHOWN HERE AND REFERENCED IN THE OTHER SECTIONS!! Admittedly, this is my least favorite method, however it does work and some people may prefer it, so I’m gonna show you how to do it real quick. To use this method we need to create a lightning app builder app page. If you don’t know what that is, check out this trailhead. Once you’ve created the app builder page, you need to drag and drop the LWC (shown in the section above) onto the page. You can find the LWC in the section show below:

After you’ve placed your LWC on the page, save and activate your App Builder page. Then click anywhere in your lightning app page canvas that isn’t specifically your LWC to bring up the page information on the right side of the screen. Grab the “Developer Name” value, you need it for the next step.

Now that an app builder page houses our component, and we have the dev name for the app page, we need to setup a list view button to pop open our page for us. Kewlio Julio, let’s get to it.

Go to the object manager and find the object you are creating a list view button for. On the object page, click the “buttons links and actions” link, then click the “New Button or Link” on the top right of that page.

On the new button or link page, you are gonna fill out the follow:
1) Fill out a Label (this can be whatever you want)
2) Select the “List Button” display type
3) Select the “Display in existing window without sidebar or header” Behavior.
4) Select the “URL” Content Source
5) In the free text area put the following URL: /lightning/n/App_Page_Developer_Name
6) Save your button

To place your new LWC list view button on your objects list view, click on the “Search Layouts for Salesforce Classic” tab on your object and then click the drop down arrow next to the “List View” layout and select the “Edit” value in the drop down.

On the edit page for the list view layout, scroll down to the “Custom Buttons” section and select your new list view button.

Now, if you traverse to your object in the app launcher, you should be able to see your button on any list view and click it. This should result in your LWC popping up for you as shown below!

The Pros and Cons of this approach are the following:
Pros:
1) It’s the second fastest of the three options to load
Cons:
1) You cannot get rid of the app builder title area without janky css hacks
2) The tab method (outlined below) loads considerably faster.
3) This can load in an iframe depending on your settings.
4) Can’t pass in list view selection ids


LWC List View Button Method 2: The Lightning Component Tab Method

This is my absolute favorite method, it loads ultra fast and is the easiest to setup. If you don’t need list view ids passed into your LWC, this is the way to go in my opinion.

This method works much like the first method, the setup is virtually identical aside from the fact that you setup a Lightning Component Tab to use as opposed to a Lightning App Builder App Page. Even the List View button setup is the same, the only difference is that you use the lightning tabs developer name at the end of the URL. So to save my hands some typing I’m only gonna show you the tab setup, please refer to the rest of the steps in the App Builder setup instruction above.

To setup a tab to use instead of an app builder page is simple. In setup go to Tabs. Then on the Tabs screen, scroll down to the “Lightning Component Tabs” and select the “New” button.

On the new lightning component tab screen select your lightning component (the one shown above or the one you’ve built), enter a tab label, a tab name and select a tab style and you’re done. MAKE SURE YOUR LWC HAS A TARGET IN THE XML FOR TABS (this is shown in the code up above), otherwise it won’t be selectable.

Once you’ve created your tab, just follow the exact steps outlined in the app builder app page scenario to for the lightning button setup and you’re done!

Pros and Cons of this approach:
Pros:
1) Fastest load time
2) Easiest setup
3) Never loads in an iFrame
Cons:
1) Cannot load in list view ids from selected list view values


LWC List View Button Method 3: The Flow Screen Method

I will urge you to please not use this method unless you absolutely need the selected list view ids passed into your LWC. I say this because the load times are significantly slower and now you have to involve two technologies (flow and lwc) instead of one, making it more complex to deal with, albeit not by a ton.

The steps for setting up the actual list view button for this method are virtually identical to others as well, aside from the URL structure for the list view button, which we will cover, but refer to the first method for setting up the majority of the actual button.

Alrightyyyyy then, here we go. This final method utilizes a flow to allow us to capture the incoming selected list view ids and send them to our LWC to manipulate.

The first thing we need to do is update our LWC a bit to allow it to receive these incoming list view ids, so let’s do thattttttt. I’ll post the code below and then discuss it.

HTML:

<template>
	<p>These are the list view ids passed: {listViewIds}</p>
	<lightning-button label="Return to List View" onclick={close}></lightning-button>
</template>

JS:

import {LightningElement, api} from 'lwc';

export default class ListViewButton extends LightningElement {
	@api listViewIds;

	close(){
		setTimeout(
			function() {
				window.history.back();
			},
			1000
		);
	}
}

XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<LightningComponentBundle xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
    <apiVersion>51.0</apiVersion>
    <description>List View Button</description>
    <isExposed>true</isExposed>
    <masterLabel>List View Button</masterLabel>
    <targets>
        <target>lightning__AppPage</target>
        <target>lightning__Tab</target>
        <target>lightning__FlowScreen</target>
        <target>lightning__RecordAction</target>
    </targets>
    <targetConfigs>
        <targetConfig targets="lightning__FlowScreen">
            <property name="listViewIds" type="String[]"></property>
        </targetConfig>
    </targetConfigs>
</LightningComponentBundle>

First let’s talk about the JavaScript file. We added two things to that file, the first is that we are now importing api at the top so that we can use the api decorator. The second is that we have created the listViewIds variable with the @api decorator on it. This allows the variable to be written to by the flow.

Next let’s talk about the metadata file, in the metadata file we have added a targetConfig. This target config allows us in the flow builder to declaratively assign the incoming list view ids to the LWC’s listViewIds variable.

Last, in the HTML file we have just created a paragraph tag to view the list view ids when they are brought over.

Now that we’ve updated the component, we need to create the flow. In setup, go to Flows and then select “New Flow” at the top to create a new flow.

You will immediately be presented with options for the type of flow you’d like to create, select “Screen Flow” and press the “Next” button., then select the “Freeform” option. You will then land on the flow builder canvas.

The first thing we need to do is create a variable. In the “Toolbox” area on the left side of the screen click the “Manager” tab and then click the “New Resource” button.

After clicking the “New Resource” button a modal will pop-up. Do the following:
1) For Resource Type select “Variable”
2) Fill out the API Name field with the value “ids” (do not include the surrounding quotes). IT MUST BE THIS VALUE TO WORK!
3) For “Data Type” select “Text”
4) Check the, “Allow Multiple Values (Collection)” checkbox
5) Check the, “Available for input” checkbox
6) Click the “Done” button


After setting up this variable you’ll need to grab a screen flow from the “Elements” tab in the toolbox and drag it onto the flow canvas.

On the Screen element modal that pops up you’ll want to do the following:
1) Enter a label and API Name
2) Uncheck the “Show Header” checkbox
3) Uncheck the “Show Footer” checkbox
4) On the left side of the modal in the “Components” area select your LWC and drop it on the page
5) Fill out the API Name for your component
6) place the “ids” variable we created above in the “listViewIds” box for the LWC
7) Click the “Done” button

Then connect your start node to your new screen node, grab the API name of your flow from the settings area of the flow canvas, activate your flow and you’re done!

The one and ONLY step that changes for the list view button setup for the flow variety is the url structure. The URL structure should be changed to the following: /flow/Flow_Developer_Name

Aside from the above, all of the other steps are the same, so please reference the first LWC Button setup method above for more info.

Pros and Cons of this method:
Pros:
1) This is the only method that can receive the ids of values selected in a list view

Cons:
1) This is by far the slowest loading method
2) It forces you to use a flow to embed your LWC
3) It’s the most complex setup
4) It hosts itself in an iFrame

Alright, that’s all folks, this blog post was long and my hands are tired. Hasta Luego!!!!!


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Salesforce Development Books I Recommend

Advanced Apex Programming
Salesforce Lightning Platform Enterprise Architecture
Mastering Salesforce DevOps

Good Non-SF Specific Development Books:

Clean Code
Clean Architecture

Salesforce Development Tutorial (LWC): How to use Data Attributes to easily pass data from your component HTML template to your JavaScript Controller

What are Data Attributes and Why Should I Use Them?

Data attributes are a truly magical thing that will, at some point, get you out of some prickly situations as a front end developer. They are essentially a way of storing data on an html element so that when a JS event gets fired your JS controller can easily get access to the data on the HTML element that fired the event.

This is especially useful in scenarios where you want to use for:each templates to generate tables, tabs or whatever else on the screen.


How to use Data Attributes (Example Code and Explanation)

Using data attributes is easy peasy lemonnnnnnnnnnn squezzyyyyyyyy… I’m sorry, it just felt right. Seriously though, it’s easy. Let’s first take a look at how we setup our HTML Template to use data attributes on a button element.

<template>
<lightning-button onclick={getDataAttributes} label="Click Me Bruh" data-donkey="donkeysAreKewl" data-turtle="NinjaTurtles"></lightning-button>
</template>

You see those weird attributes on my element? The “data-donkey” and “data-turtle” attributes? Those are data attributes and as you can see they can be named anything! However they must be in this format: data-randomnameyouchoose. Anything can come after the “data-” when setting up the data attributes on your element (do make sure each attribute has a unique name though!). Pretty cool right? The best part comes next though! Let’s check out the JavaScript Controller’s getDataAttributes method.

import {LightningElement} from 'lwc';

export default class LwcDataAttributes extends LightningElement {
	getDataAttributes(event){
		console.log('This is the data set ::: ' + 
                JSON.stringify(event.target.dataset));
		console.log('This is the data set turtle ::: ' + 
                JSON.stringify(event.target.dataset.turtle));
	}
}

You see that console log that has the “event.target.dataset” value in it? That event.target.dataset produces a Map that houses all of your data attributes in it. The output looks like this:

{"donkey":"donkeysAreKewl","turtle":"NinjaTurtles"}

As you can see it’s a key value pair, the key is whatever you named your data attribute on the HTML Element (notice the data- is excluded however) and the value is whatever value you assigned to that element on your HTML Element.

Now, you may also noticed in the console log below that one that we have the “event.target.dataset.turtle”, this line directly accesses the “data-turtle” value so it will just output “NinjaTurtles”. Pretty niftyyyyy! If you used event.target.dataset.donkey you would get the “donkeysAreKewl” value.

And to be honest that’s really all there is to it, there is one other quick thing we should review though.


What is an Event and the Difference between event.target and event.currentTarget

Boy oh boy does this really confuse people, so let me break it down right quick. Whatever element has the JS event attached to it is the one sending the event parameter to your JS method when you trigger the event (for instance when you use an onclick JS event on an HTML element and then click it to invoke the JS method). THIS IS IMPORTANT! I say this because, it is… trust me, but more importantly you can get into some tricky situations with event.target and event.currentTarget.

The key difference here is that event.target is the TRUE TARGET OF YOUR CLICK! and event.currentTarget is the ELEMENT THAT FIRED THE JS EVENT!

Even if you’ve never done it, you can sometimes wrap multiple elements within a div, and that div is actually the one that houses the onclick event. If you click a button within that div, the button is the “event.target” and the div is the “event.currentTarget”. Be wary of this! If you start to see null values or values you don’t expect in your dataset in your JS controller, this is more than likely why! It has confused many a person (including myself), so just make sure you are paying close attention to which target you are using in your controller.


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We now have a redbubble store setup so you can buy cool Coding With The Force merchandise! Please check it out! Every purchase goes to supporting the blog and YouTube channel.

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If you liked this post make sure to follow us on all our social media outlets to stay as up to date as possible with everything!

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Salesforce Development Books I Recommend

Advanced Apex Programming
Salesforce Lightning Platform Enterprise Architecture
Mastering Salesforce DevOps

Good Non-SF Specific Development Books:

Clean Code
Clean Architecture

SoC and the Apex Common Library Tutorial Series Part 2: Introduction to the Apex Common Library

https://youtu.be/3JmWECi77zU

What is the Apex Common Library?

The Apex Common Library is an open source library originally created by Andy Fawcett when he was the CTO of FinancialForce and currently upkept by many community members, but most notably John Daniel. Aside from its origins and the fflib_ in the class names, it is no longer linked to FinancialForce in any way.

The library was originally created because implementing the Separation of Concerns Design Principle is difficult no matter what tech stack you’re working in. For Salesforce, the Apex Common Library was built to simplify the process of implementing Separation of Concerns as well as assist in managing DML transactions, creating high quality unit tests (you need the Apex Mocks library to assist with this) and enforcing coding and security best practices. If you want an exceptionally clean, understandable and flexible code base, the Apex Common library will greatly assist you in those endeavors.


Does The Apex Common Library Implement Separation of Concerns for me Automatically?

Unfortunately it’s not that simple. This library doesn’t just automatically do this for you, no library could, but what it does is give you the tools to easily implement this design principle in your respective Salesforce Org or Managed Package. Though there are many more classes in the Apex Common Library, there are four major classes to familiarize yourself with to be able to implement this, four object oriented programming concepts and three major design patterns. Additionally it’s beneficial if you understand the difference between a Unit Test and an Integration Test. We’ll go over all of these things below.


The Four Major Classes

1) fflib_Application.cls This Application class acts as a way to easily implement the Factory pattern for building the different layers when running your respective applications within your org (or managed package). When I say “Application” for an org based implementation this could mean a lot of things, but think of it as a grouping of code that represents a specific section of your org. Maybe you have a service desk in your org, that service desk could be represented as an “Application”. This class and the factory pattern are also what makes the Apex Mocks Library work, without implementing it, Apex Mocks will not work.

2) fflib_SObjectDomain.cls This houses the base class that all Domain classes you create will extend. The many methods within this class serve to make your life considerably easier when building your domain classes, for each object that requires a trigger, out. You can check out my Apex Common Domain Layer Implementation Guide for more details.

3) fflib_SObjectSelector.cls This houses the base class that all Selector classes you create will extend. The many methods within this class will serve to make your life a ton easier when implementing a selector classes for your various objects in your org. You can check out my Apex Common Selector Layer Implementation Guide

4) fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork.cls This houses the logic to implement the Unit of Work design pattern in your code. There a ton of useful methods within it that will make your life developing on the platform quite a bit simpler. For more information on the fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork class and the concept itself, please refer to my guide on how to use the Unit of Work Pattern in Salesforce.


The Four Object Oriented Programming Concepts

1) Inheritance) – When a class inherits (or extends) another class and the sub class gets access to all of its publicly accessible methods and variables.

2) Polymorphism) – When a class uses overloaded methods or overrides an inherited classes methods.

3) Encapsulation) – Only publishing (or making public) methods and class variables that are needed for other classes to use it.

4) Interfaces) – An interface is a contract between it and a class that implements it to make sure the class has specific method signatures implemented.

More information on the difference between Inheritance and Polymorphism


The Four Design Patterns

1) The Factory Design Pattern – Used in the fflib_Application class
2) The Unit of Work Design Pattern – Used in the fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork class
3) The Template Method Design Pattern – Used in the fflib_SObjectDomain class
4) The Builder Pattern – Used in the fflib_SObjectSelector class


Next Section

Part 3: The Factory Pattern

SoC and the Apex Common Library Tutorial Series Part 3: The Factory Method Pattern

What is the Factory Method Pattern?

The factory method pattern allows you to create objects (or instantiate classes) without having to specify the exact class that is being created. Say for instance you have a service class that can be called by multiple object types and those object types each have their own object specific implementation for creating tasks for them. Instead of writing a ton of if else’s in the service class to determine which class should be constructed, you could leverage the factory method pattern and massively reduce your code.


Why is it Useful?

It’s useful because if used appropriately it can massively reduce the amount of code in your codebase and will allow for a much more dynamic and flexible implementation. The amount of flexibility when used appropriately can be absolutely astounding. Let’s take a look at two different examples. One not using the factory pattern and another that does!

Creating Tasks for Different Objects (No Factory Pattern):

public with sharing class Task_Service_Impl
{
	//This method calls the task creators for each object type
	public void createTasks(Set<Id> recordIds, Schema.SObjectType objectType)
	{
            if(objectType == Account.getSObjectType()){

                //Accounts (and the other object types below) is not the same as the regular 
                //Account object. 
                //This is further explained in the domain layer section of this wiki. 
                //Basically you name your domain class
                //the plural version of the object the domain represents
                new Accounts().createTasks(recordIds);
            }
            else if(objectType == Case.getSObjectType()){
                new Cases().createTasks(recordIds);
            }
            else if(objectType == Opportunity.getSObjectType()){
                new Opportunities().createTasks(recordIds);
            }
            else if(objectType == Taco__c.getSObjectType()){
                new Tacos().createTasks(recordIds);
            }
            else if(objectType == Chocolate__c.getSObjectType()){
                new Chocolates().createTasks(recordIds);
            }
            //etc etc for each object could go on for decades
        }
}

Creating Tasks for Different Objects (Factory Pattern):

//The task service that anywhere can call and it will operate as expected with super minimal logic
public with sharing class Task_Service_Impl implements Task_Service_Interface
{
        //This method calls the task creators for each object type
	public void createTasks(Set<Id> recordIds)
	{
            //Using our Application class we are able to instantiate new instances of 
            //domain classes based on the recordIds we pass 
            //the newInstance method.
            //We cover the fflib_Application class and how it uses the factory pattern a 
            //ton more in the next section.
	    fflib_ISObjectDomain objectDomain = Application.domain.newInstance(recordIds);

	    if(objectDomain instanceof Task_Creator_Interface){
	        Task_Creator_Interface taskCreator = (Task_Creator_Interface)objectDomain;
		taskCreator.createTasks(recordIds);
	    }
	}
}

Right now you might be kinda shook… at least I know I was the first time I implemented it, lol. How on Earth is this possible?? How can so much code be reduced to so little? The first thing we do is instantiate a new domain class (domain classes are basically just kinda fancy trigger handlers, but more on that later) using our Application class (our factory class) simply by sending it record ids. The Application factory class generates the object specific Domain class by determining the set of recordIds object type using the Id.getSObjectType() method that Salesforce makes available in Apex. Then by implementing the Task_Creator_Interface interface on each of the objects domain classes I’m guaranteeing that if something is an instance of the Task_Creator_Interface they will have a method called createTasks! Depending on the use case this can take hundreds of lines of code and reduce it to almost nothing. It also helps in the Separation of Concerns area by making our services much more abstract. It delegates logic more to their respective services or domains instead of somewhere the logic probably doesn’t belong.


Where does it fit into Separation of Concerns?

Basically it reduces your need to declare concreate class/object types in your code in many places and it allows you to create extremely flexible and abstract services (more on this in the implementing the service layer with apex common section). Again take the example of task creation, maybe you have 15 controller classes (classes connected to a UI) in your org making tasks for 15 different objects and each object has a different task implementation, but you want to move all that task creation logic into a singular service class that anywhere can call for any object at any time. The factory method pattern is quite literally built for this scenario. In fact I have two examples below demonstrating it! One using a simple factory class to create tasks and one using the fflib_Application class to do the same thing.


Where is it used in the Apex Common Library

It’s leveraged heavily by the fflib_Application class, which you can find out more about here.


Example Code (Abstract Task Creation App)

The following code example in the repo is an example of how the factory pattern could work in a real world Salesforce implementation to allow for tasks to be created on multiple objects using a different implementation for each object.

Apex Common Abstract Task Creation App


Next Section

Part 4: The fflib_Application Class

SoC and the Apex Common Library Tutorial Series Part 4: The fflib_Application Class

What is the fflib_Application class?

Quality question… I mean honestly wtf is this thing? Lol, sorry, let’s figure it out together. The fflib_Application class is around for two primary purposes. The first is to allow you an extremely abstract way of creating new instances of your unit of work, service layer, domain layer and selector layer in the Apex Common Library through the use of the factory pattern. The second is that implementing this application class is imperative if you want to leverage the Apex Mocks unit testing library. It depends on this Application Factory being implemented.

Most importantly though, if you understand how interfaces, inheritance and polymorphism work implementing this class allows you to write extremely abstract Salesforce implementations, which we’ll discuss more in sections below


Why is this class used?

Ok, if we ignore the fact that this is required for us to use the Apex Mocks library, understanding the power behind this class requires us to take a step back and formulate a real world Salesforce use case for implementing it… hopefully the following one will be easy for everyone to understand.

Say for instance I have a decent sized Salesforce instance and our business has a use case to create tasks across multiple objects and the logic for creating those tasks are unique to every single object. Maybe on the Account object we create three new tasks every single time we create an account and on the Contact object we create two tasks every single time a record is created or updated in a particular way and we ideally want to call this logic on the fly from anywhere in our system.

No matter what we should probably place the task creation logic in our domain layer because it’s relevant to each individual object, but pretend for a second that we have like 20 different objects we need this kind of functionality on. Maybe we need the executed logic in an abstract “task creator” button that can be placed on any lightning app builder page and maybe some overnight batch jobs need to execute the logic too.

Well… what do we do? Let’s just take the abstract “Task Creator” button we might want to place on any object in our system. We could call each individual domain layer class’s task creation logic in the code based on the object we were on (code example below), but that logic tree could get massive and it’s not super ideal.

Task Service example with object logic tree

public with sharing class Task_Service_Impl
{
	//This method calls the task creators for each object type
	public void createTasks(Set recordIds, Schema.SObjectType objectType)
	{
            if(objectType == Account.getSObjectType()){
                new Accounts().createTasks(recordIds);
            }
            else if(objectType == Case.getSObjectType()){
                new Cases().createTasks(recordIds);
            }
            else if(objectType == Opportunity.getSObjectType()){
                new Opportunities().createTasks(recordIds);
            }
            else if(objectType == Taco__c.getSObjectType()){
                new Tacos().createTasks(recordIds);
            }
            else if(objectType == Chocolate__c.getSObjectType()){
                new Chocolates().createTasks(recordIds);
            }
            //etc etc for each object could go on for decades
        }
}

Maybe… just maybe there’s an easier way. This is where the factory pattern and the fflib_Application class come in handy. Through the use of the factory pattern we can create an abstract Task Service that can (based on a set of records we pass to it) select the right business logic to execute in each domain layer dynamically.

Task Service example with the factory pattern (example with a ton of comments explaining this here)

//Creation of the Application factory class
public with sharing class Application
{
	public static final fflib_Application.ServiceFactory service =
			new fflib_Application.ServiceFactory(
			new Map<Type, Type>{
				Task_Service_Interface.class => Task_Service_Impl.class}
			);

	public static final fflib_Application.DomainFactory domain =
	new fflib_Application.DomainFactory(
		Application.selector,
		new Map<SObjectType, Type>{Case.SObjectType => Cases.Constructor.class,
		Opportunity.SObjectType => Opportunities.Constructor.class,
                Account.SObjectType => Accounts.Constructor.class,
                Taco__c.SObjectType => Tacos.Constructor.class,
                Chocolate__c.SObjectType => Chocolates.Constructor.class}
	);
}
//The task service that anywhere can call and it will operate as expected with super minimal logic
public with sharing class Task_Service_Impl implements Task_Service_Interface
{
        //This method calls the task creators for each object type
    public void createTasks(Set<Id> recordIds, Schema.SObjectType objectType)
    {
        fflib_ISObjectDomain objectDomain = Application.domain.newInstance(recordIds);

        if(objectDomain instanceof Task_Creator_Interface){
            Task_Creator_Interface taskCreator = (Task_Creator_Interface)objectDomain;
            taskCreator.createTasks(recordIds);
        }
    }
}

You might be lookin at the two code examples right now like wuttttttttt how thooooo?? And I just wanna say, I fully understand that. The first time I saw this implemented I thought the same thing, but it’s a pretty magical thing. Thanks to the newInstance() methods on the fflib_Application class and the Task_Creator_Interface we’ve implemented on the domain classes, you can dynamically generate the correct domain when the code runs and call the create tasks method. Pretty wyld right? Also if you’re thinkin, “Yea that’s kinda nifty Matt, but you had to create this Application class and that’s a bunch of extra code.” you need to step back even farther. This Application factory can be leveraged ANYWHERE IN YOUR ENTIRE CODEBASE! Not just locally in your service class. If you need to implement something similar to automatically generate opportunities or Accounts or something from tons of different objects you can leverage this exact same Application class there. In the long run, this ends up being wayyyyyyyyy less code.

If you want a ton more in depth explanation on this, please watch the tutorial video. We code a live example together so I can explain this concept. It’s certainly not easy to grasp at first glance.


fflib_Application inner classes and methods cheat sheet

Inside the fflib_Application class there are four classes that represent factories for the your unit of work, service layer, domain layer and selector layer.

Let’s go over them and how they work:

The Unit of Work Factory

Inside the fflib_Application class there is the UnitOfWorkFactory class. Let’s first figure out how to instantiate this class:

//The constructor for this class requires you to pass a list of SObject types in the dependency order. So in this instance Accounts would always be inserted before your Contacts and Contacts before Cases, etc.
public static final fflib_Application.UnitOfWorkFactory UOW =
		new fflib_Application.UnitOfWorkFactory(
			new List<SObjectType>{
                        Account.SObjectType,
                        Contact.SObjectType,
			Case.SObjectType,
			Task.SObjectType}
	);

After creating this unit of work variable above ^ in your Application class example here there are four important new instance methods you can leverage to generate a new unit of work:

1) newInstance() – This creates a new instance of the unit of work using the SObjectType list passed in the constructor.

newInstance() Example Method Call

public with sharing class Application
{
    public static final fflib_Application.UnitOfWorkFactory UOW =
		new fflib_Application.UnitOfWorkFactory(
			new List<SObjectType>{
                        Account.SObjectType,
                        Contact.SObjectType,
			Case.SObjectType,
			Task.SObjectType}
    );
}

public with sharing class SomeClass{
    public void someClassMethod(){
         fflib_ISObjectUnitOfWork unitOfWork = Application.UOW.newInstance();
    }
}

2) newInstance(fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork.IDML dml) – This creates a new instance of the unit of work using the SObjectType list passed in the constructor and a new IDML implementation to do custom DML work not inherently supported by the fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork class. More info on the IDML interface here

newInstance(fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork.IDML dml) Example Method Call

public with sharing class Application
{
    public static final fflib_Application.UnitOfWorkFactory UOW =
		new fflib_Application.UnitOfWorkFactory(
			new List<SObjectType>{
                        Account.SObjectType,
                        Contact.SObjectType,
			Case.SObjectType,
			Task.SObjectType}
    );
}

//Custom IDML implementation
public with sharing class IDML_Example implements fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork.IDML
{
    void dmlInsert(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom insert logic here
    }
    void dmlUpdate(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom update logic here
    }
    void dmlDelete(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom delete logic here
    }
    void eventPublish(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom event publishing logic here
    }
    void emptyRecycleBin(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom empty recycle bin logic here
    }
}

public with sharing class SomeClass{
    public void someClassMethod(){
         fflib_ISObjectUnitOfWork unitOfWork = Application.UOW.newInstance(new IDML_Example());
    }
}

3) newInstance(List <SObjectType> objectTypes) – This creates a new instance of the unit of work and overwrites the SObject type list passed in the constructor so you can have a custom order if you need it.

newInstance(List <SObjectType> objectTypes) Example Method Call

public with sharing class Application
{
    public static final fflib_Application.UnitOfWorkFactory UOW =
		new fflib_Application.UnitOfWorkFactory(
			new List<SObjectType>{
                        Account.SObjectType,
                        Contact.SObjectType,
			Case.SObjectType,
			Task.SObjectType}
    );
}

public with sharing class SomeClass{
    public void someClassMethod(){
         fflib_ISObjectUnitOfWork unitOfWork = Application.UOW.newInstance(new List<SObjectType>{
                        Case.SObjectType,
                        Account.SObjectType,
                        Task.SObjectType,
                        Contact.SObjectType,
			});
    }
}

4) newInstance(List objectTypes, fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork.IDML dml) – This creates a new instance of the unit of work and overwrites the SObject type list passed in the constructor so you can have a custom order if you need it and a new IDML implementation to do custom DML work not inherently supported by the fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork class. More info on the IDML interface here.

newInstance(List objectTypes, fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork.IDML dml) Example Method Call

public with sharing class Application
{
    public static final fflib_Application.UnitOfWorkFactory UOW =
		new fflib_Application.UnitOfWorkFactory(
			new List<SObjectType>{
                        Account.SObjectType,
                        Contact.SObjectType,
			Case.SObjectType,
			Task.SObjectType}
    );
}

//Custom IDML implementation
public with sharing class IDML_Example implements fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork.IDML
{
    void dmlInsert(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom insert logic here
    }
    void dmlUpdate(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom update logic here
    }
    void dmlDelete(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom delete logic here
    }
    void eventPublish(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom event publishing logic here
    }
    void emptyRecycleBin(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom empty recycle bin logic here
    }
}

public with sharing class SomeClass{
    public void someClassMethod(){
         fflib_ISObjectUnitOfWork unitOfWork = Application.UOW.newInstance(new List<SObjectType>{
                        Case.SObjectType,
                        Account.SObjectType,
                        Task.SObjectType,
                        Contact.SObjectType,
			}, new IDML_Example());
    }
}

The Service Factory

Inside the fflib_Application class there is the ServiceFactory class. Let’s first figure out how to instantiate this class:

//This allows us to create a factory for instantiating service classes. You send it the interface for your service class
//and it will return the correct service layer class
//Exmaple initialization: Object objectService = Application.service.newInstance(Task_Service_Interface.class);
public static final fflib_Application.ServiceFactory service =
	new fflib_Application.ServiceFactory(new Map<Type, Type>{
		SObject_SharingService_Interface.class => SObject_SharingService_Impl.class
	});


After creating this service variable above ^ in your Application class example here there is one important new instance method you can leverage to generate a new service class instance:

1) newInstance(Type serviceInterfaceType) – This method sends back an instance of your service implementation class based on the interface you send in to it.

newInstance(Type serviceInterfaceType) Example method call:

//This is using the service variable above that we would've created in our Application class
Application.service.newInstance(Task_Service_Interface.class);

The Selector Factory

Inside the fflib_Application class there is the SelectorFactory class. Let’s first figure out how to instantiate this class:

//This allows us to create a factory for instantiating selector classes. You send it an object type and it sends
//you the corresponding selectory layer class.
//Example initialization: fflib_ISObjectSelector objectSelector = Application.selector.newInstance(objectType);
public static final fflib_Application.SelectorFactory selector =
	new fflib_Application.SelectorFactory(
		new Map<SObjectType, Type>{
			Case.SObjectType => Case_Selector.class,
			Contact.SObjectType => Contact_Selector.class,
			Task.SObjectType => Task_Selector.class}
	);

After creating this selector variable above ^ in your Application class example here there are three important methods you can leverage to generate a new selector class instance:

1) newInstance(SObjectType sObjectType) – This method will generate a new instance of the selector based on the object type passed to it. So for instance if you have an Opportunity_Selector class and pass Opportunity.SObjectType to the newInstance method you will get back your Opportunity_Selector class (pending you have configured it this way in your Application class map passed to the class.

newInstance(SObjectType sObjectType) Example method call:

//This is using the selector variable above that we would've created in our Application class
Application.selector.newInstance(Case.SObjectType);

2) selectById(Set<Id> recordIds) – This method, based on the ids you pass will automatically call your registered selector layer class for the set of ids object type. It will then call the selectSObjectById method that all Selector classes must implement and return a list of sObjects to you.

selectById(Set<Id> recordIds) Example method call:

//This is using the selector variable above that we would've created in our Application class
Application.selector.selectById(accountIdSet);

3) selectByRelationship(List<sObject> relatedRecords, SObjectField relationshipField) – This method, based on the relatedRecords and the relationship field passed to it will generate a selector layer class for the object type in the relationship field. So say you were querying the Contact object and you wanted an Account Selector class, you could call this method it, pass the list of contacts you queried for and the AccountId field to have an Account Selector returned to you (pending that selector was configured in the Application show above in this wiki article).

selectByRelationship(List<sObject> relatedRecords, SObjectField relationshipField) Example method call:

//This is using the selector variable above that we would've created in our Application class
Application.selector.selectByRelationship(contactList, Contact.AccountId);

The Domain Factory

Inside the fflib_Application class there is the DomainFactory class. Let’s first figure out how to instantiate this class:

//This allows you to create a factory for instantiating domain classes. You can send it a set of record ids and
//you'll get the corresponding domain layer.
//Example initialization: fflib_ISObjectDomain objectDomain = Application.domain.newInstance(recordIds);
public static final fflib_Application.DomainFactory domain =
	new fflib_Application.DomainFactory(
		Application.selector,
		new Map<SObjectType, Type>{Case.SObjectType => Cases.Constructor.class,
		Contact.SObjectType => Contacts.Constructor.class}
	);

After creating this domain variable above ^ in your Application class example here there are three important methods you can leverage to generate a new domain class instance:

1) newInstance(Set <Id> recordIds) – This method creates a new instance of your domain class based off the object type in the set of ids you pass it.

newInstance(Set<Id> recordIds) Example method call:

Application.domain.newInstance(accountIdSet);

2) newInstance(List<sObject> records) – This method creates a new instance of your domain class based off the object type in the list of records you pass it.

newInstance(List<sObject> records) Example method call:

Application.domain.newInstance(accountList);

3) newInstance(List<sObject> records, SObjectType domainSObjectType) – This method will create a newInstance of the domain class based on the object type and record list passed to it.

newInstance(List<sObject> records, SObjectType domainSObjectType) Example method call:

Application.domain.newInstance(accountList, Account.SObjectType);

The setMock Methods

In every factory class inside the fflib_Application class there is a setMock method. These methods are used to pass in mock/fake versions of your classes for unit testing purposes. Make sure to leverage this method if you are planning to do unit testing. Leveraging this method eliminates the need to use dependency injection in your classes to allow for mocking. There are examples of how to leverage this method in the Implementing Mock Unit Testing with Apex Mocks section of this wiki.


Next Section

Part 5: The Unit of Work Pattern

SoC and the Apex Common Library Tutorial Series Part 5: The Unit of Work Pattern

What is the Unit of Work Pattern (UOW)

A Unit of Work, “Maintains a list of objects affected by a business transaction and coordinates the writing out of changes and the resolution of concurrency problems”.

The goal of the unit of work pattern is to simplify DML in your code and only commit changes to the database/objects when it’s truly time to commit. Considering the many limits around DML in Salesforce, it’s important to employ this pattern in your org in some way. It’s also important to note that this, “maintains a list of objects affected by a business transaction”, which indicates that the UOW pattern should be prevalent in your service layer (The service layer houses business logic).

The UOW pattern also ensures we don’t have data inconsistencies in our Salesforce instance. It does this by only committing work when all the DML operations complete successfully. It rolls back our transactions when any DML fails in our unit of work.


Benefits of the using the Unit of Work Pattern in Salesforce

There are several, but here are the biggest of them all… massive amounts of code reduction, having consistency with your DML transactions, doing the minimal DML statements feasible (bulkification) and DML mocking in unit tests. Let’s figure out how we reduce the code and make it more consistent first.

The Code Reduction and Consistency

Think about all the places in your codebase where you insert records, error handle the inserting of your records and manage the transactional state of your records (Savepoints). Maybe if your org is new there’s not a ton happening yet, but as it grows the amount of code dealing with that can become enormous and, even worse, inconsistent. I’ve worked in 12 year old orgs that had 8000+ lines of code just dedicated to inserting records throughout the system and with every dev who wrote the code a new variety of transaction management took place, different error handling (or none at all), etc.

Code Bulkification

The unit of work pattern also helps a great deal with code bulkification. It encourages you to to finish creating and modifying 100% of your records in your transaction prior to actually committing them (doing the dml transactions) to the database (objects). It makes sure that you are doing that absolute minimal transactions necessary to be successful. For instance, maybe for some reason in your code you are updating cases in one method, and when you’re done you call another method and it updates those same cases… why do that? You could register all those updates and update all those cases at once with one DML statement. Whether you realize it at the time or not, even dml statement counts… use them sparingly.

DML Mocking for Unit Tests

If you’re not sure what mocking and unit test are, then definitely check out my section on that in the wiki here. Basically, in an ideal scenario you would like to do unit testing, but unit testing depends on you having the ability to mock classes for you tests (basically creating fake versions of your class you have complete control over in your tests). Creating this layer that handles your dml transactions allows you to mock that layer in your classes when doing unit tests… If this is confusing, no worries, we’ll discuss it a bunch more later in the last three sections of this wiki.


Next Section

Part 6: The fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork Class

SoC and the Apex Common Library Tutorial Series Part 6: The fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork Class


What is the fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork class?

It is a foundation built to allow you to leverage the unit of work design pattern from within Salesforce. Basically this class is designed to hold your database operations (insert, update, etc) in memory until you are ready to do all of your database transactions in one big transaction. It also handles savepoint rollbacks to ensure data consistentcy. For instance, if you are inserting Opportunities with Quotes in the same database (DML) transaction, chances are you don’t wanna insert those Opportunities if your Quotes fail to insert. The unit of work class is setup to automatically handle that transaction management and roll back if anything fails.

If also follows bulkification best practices to make your life even easier dealing with DML transactions.


Why is this class used?

This class is utilized so that you can have super fine control over your database transactions and so that you only do DML transactions when every single record is prepped and ready to be inserted, updated, etc.

Additionally there are two reasons it is important to leverage this class (or a class like it):
1) To allow for DML mocking in your test classes.
2) To massively reduce duplicate code for DML transactions in your org.
3) To make DML transaction management consistent

Think about those last two for a second… how many lines of code in your org insert, update, upsert (etc) records in your org? Then think about how much code also error handles those transaction and (if you’re doing things right) how much code goes into savepoint rollbacks. That all adds up over time to a ton of code. This class houses it all in one centralized apex class. You’ll never have to re-write all that logic again.


How to Register a Callback method for an Apex Commons UOW

The following code example shows you how to setup a callback method for your units of work using the fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork.IDoWork interface, should you need them.

public inherited sharing class HelpDeskAppPostCommitLogic implements fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork.IDoWork{
    List<Task> taskList;
    
    public HelpDeskAppPostCommitLogic(List<Task> taskList){
        this.taskList = taskList; 
    }
    
    public void doWork(){
        //write callback code here
    }
}

The code below shows you how to actually make sure your unit of work calls your callback method.

fflib_ISObjectUnitOfWork uow = Helpdesk_Application.helpDeskUOW.newInstance();
//code to create some tasks
uow.registerNew(newTasks);
uow.registerWork(new HelpDeskAppPostCommitLogic(newTasks));
uow.commitWork();    

Apex Commons Unit of Work Limitations

1) Records within the same object that have lookups to each other are currently not supported. For example, if the Account object has a Lookup to itself, that relationship cannot be registered.

2) You cannot do all or none false database transactions without creating a custom IDML implementation.

Database.insert(acctList, false);

3) To send emails with the Apex Commons UOW you must utilize the special registerEmail method.

4) It does not manage FLS and CRUD without implementing a custom class that implements the IDML interface and does that for you.

To do these things in your own way you would need to make a new class that implements the fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork’s IDML interface which we’ll cover below


How and When to use the fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork IDML Interface

If your unit of work needs a custom implementation for inserting, updating, deleting, etc that is not supported by the SimpleDML inner class then you are gonna want to create a new class that implements the fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork.IDML interface. After you create that class if you were using the Application factory you would instantiate your unit of work like so Application.uow.newInstance(new customIDMLClass()); otherwise you would initialize it using public static fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork uow = new fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork(new List<SObjectType>{Case.SObjectType}, new customIDMLClass());. A CUSTOM IDML CLASS IS SUPER IMPORTANT IF YOU WANT TO MANAGE CRUD AND FLS!!! THE fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork class does not do that for you! So let’s check out an example of how to implement a custom IDML class together below.

Example of an IDML Class

//Implementing this class allows you to overcome to limitations of the regular unit of work class.
public with sharing class IDML_Example implements fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork.IDML
{
    public void dmlInsert(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom insert logic here
    }
    public void dmlUpdate(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom update logic here
    }
    public void dmlDelete(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom delete logic here
    }
    public void eventPublish(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom event publishing logic here
    }
    public void emptyRecycleBin(List<SObject> objList){
        //custom empty recycle bin logic here
    }
}

fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork class method cheat sheet

This does not encompass all methods in the fflib_SObjectUnitOfWork class, however it does cover the most commonly used methods. There are also methods in this class to publish platform events should you need them but they aren’t covered below.

1) registerNew(SObject record) Registers a single record as a new record that need to be inserted.
2)
registerNew(List<SObject> records) – Registers a list of records as new records that need to be inserted.
3)
registerNew(SObject record, Schema.SObjectField relatedToParentField, SObject relatedToParentRecord) Registers a new record that needs to be inserted with a parent record relationship (this parent needs to have also been registered as a new record in your unit of work).
4)
registerRelationship(SObject record, Schema.SObjectField relatedToField, SObject relatedTo) Registers a relationship between two records that have yet to be inserted into the database. Both records need to be registered in your unit of work.
5)
registerRelationship( Messaging.SingleEmailMessage email, SObject relatedTo ) This method will allow you to register a relationship between an email message and a record. Both the email message and the record need to be registered in your unit of work to allow this to work.
6)
registerRelationship(SObject record, Schema.SObjectField relatedToField, Schema.SObjectField externalIdField, Object externalId) This method can be used to register a relationship between one record and another using an external id field. There is an example of how to implement this in the comments for this method linked above.
7)
registerDirty(SObject record) Registers a single record to be updated.
8) registerDirty(List records, List dirtyFields) This method should be used if you believe you’ve already registered a list of records to be updated by your unit of work and some of that records fields have been updated. This basically merges those new field updates into your already registered record.
9)
registerDirty(SObject record, List dirtyFields) This method should be used if you believe you’ve already registered a record to be updated by your unit of work and some of that records fields have been updated. This basically merges those new field updates into your already registered record.
10)
registerDirty(SObject record, Schema.SObjectField relatedToParentField, SObject relatedToParentRecord) This method is used to register an update to a record while also registering a new relationship to another record that has been registered as a new record in the same unit of work.
11)
registerDirty(List<SObject> records) This method is used to register a list of records to be updated.
12)
registerUpsert(SObject record) This method is used to register a single record to be upserted.
13) registerUpsert(List<SObject> records) This method is used to register a list of records for an upsert.
14) registerDeleted(SObject record) Registers a single record to be deleted.
15) registerDeleted(List<SObject> records) Registers a list of records to be deleted.
16)
registerPermanentlyDeleted(List<SObject> records) Registers a list of records to be permanently deleted. Basically it deletes records and then removes them from the recycle bin as well.
17)
registerPermanentlyDeleted(SObject record) Registers a record to be permanently deleted from the org. Basically it deletes records and then removes them from the recycle bin as well.
18)
registerEmptyRecycleBin(SObject record) This registers a record to be permanently deleted from the system by both deleting it and emptying it from the recycle bin.
19) public void registerEmptyRecycleBin(List<SObject> records) This takes a list of records and permanently deletes them from the system.
20) registerEmail(Messaging.Email email) Registers an email message to be sent
21) registerWork(IDoWork work) Registers a callback method to be called after your work has been committed to the database.
22) commitWork() Commits your unit of work (records registered) to the database. This should always be called last.


Next Section

Part 7: The Service Layer

SoC and the Apex Common Library Tutorial Series Part 7: The Service Layer

https://youtu.be/5tM_MHV1ypY

What is the Service Layer?

The Service Layer, “Defines an application’s boundaries with a layer of services that establishes a set of available operations and coordinates the application’s response in each operation”. – Martin Fowler

This essentially just means that the service layer should house your business logic. It should be a centralized place that holds code that represents business logic for each object (database table) or the service layer logic for a custom built app in your org (more common when building managed packages).

Difference between the Service Layer and Domain Layer – People seem to often confuse this layer with the Domain layer. The Domain layer is only for object specific default operations (triggers, validations, updates that should always execute on a database transaction, etc). The Service layer is for business logic for major modules/applications in your org. Sometimes that module is represented by an object, sometimes it is represented by a grouping of objects. Domain layer logic is specific to each individual object whereas services often are not.


Service Layer Naming Conventions

Class Names – Your service classes should be named after the area of the application your services represent. Typically services classes are created for important objects or applications within your org.

Service Class Name Examples (Note that I prefer underscores in class names, this is just personal preference):

Account_Service 
DocumentGenerationApp_Service

Method Names – The public method names should be the names of the business operations they represent. The method names should reflect what the end users of your system would refer to the business operation as. Service layer methods should also ideally always be static.

Method Parameter Types and Naming – The method parameters in public methods for the service layer should typically only accept collections (Map, Set, List) as the majority of service layer methods should be bulkified (there are some scenarios however that warrant non-collection types). The parameters should be named something that reflects the data they represent.

Service Class Method Names and Parameter Examples:

public static void calculateOpportunityProfits(List<Account> accountsToCalculate)
public static void generateWordDocument(Map<String, SObject> sObjectByName)

Service Layer Security

Service Layer Security Enforcement – Service layers hold business logic so by default they should at minimum use inherited sharing when declaring the classes, however I would suggest always using with sharing and allowing developers to elevate the code to run without sharing when necessary by using a private inner class.

Example Security for a Service Layer Class:

public with sharing class Account_Service{
    public static void calculateOpportunityProfits(List<Account> accountsToCalculate){
        //code here
        new Account_Service_WithoutSharing().calculateOpportunityProfits_WithoutSharing(accountsToCalculate);
    }

    private without sharing class Account_Service_WithoutSharing{
        public void calculateOpportunityProfits_WithoutSharing(List<Account> accountsToCalculate){
            //code here
        }
    }
}

Service Layer Code Best Practices

Keeping the code as flexible as possible

You should make sure that the code in the service layer does not expect the data passed to it to be in any particular format. For instance, if the service layer code is expecting a List of Accounts that has a certain set of fields filled out, your service method has just become very fragile. What if the service needs an additional field on that list of accounts to be filled out in the future to do its job? Then you have to refactor all the places building lists of data to send to that service layer method.

Instead you could pass in a set of Account Ids, have the service method query for all the fields it actually requires itself, and then return the appropriate data. This will make your service layer methods much more flexible.

Transaction Management

Your service layer method should handle transaction management (either with the unit of work pattern or otherwise) by making sure to leverage Database.setSavePoint() and using try catch blocks to rollback when the execution fails.

Transaction management example

public static void calculateOpportunityProfits(Set<Id> accountIdsToCalculate){
        List<Account> accountsToCalculate = [SELECT Id FROM Account WHERE Id IN : accountIdsToCalculate];
        System.Savepoint savePoint = Database.setSavePoint();
        try{
            database.insert(accountsToCalculate);
        }
        catch(Exception e){
            Database.rollback(savePoint);
            throw e;
        }
}

Compound Services

Sometimes code needs to call more than one method in the service layer of your code. In this case instead of calling both service layer methods from your calling code like in the below example, you would ideally want to create a compound service method in your service layer.

Example calling both methods (not ideal)

try{
    Account_Service.calculateOpportunityProfits(accountIds);
    Account_Service.calculateProjectedOpportunityProfits(accountIds);
}
catch(Exception e){
    throw e;
}

The reason the above code is detrimental is that you would either have one of two side effects. The transaction management would only be separately by each method and one could fail and the other could complete successfully, despite the fact we don’t actually want that to happen. Alternatively you could handle transaction management in the class calling the service layer, which isn’t ideal either.

Instead we should create a new method in the service layer that combines those methods and handles the transaction management in a cleaner manner.

Example calling the compound method

try{
    Account_Service.calculateRealAndProjectedOpportunityProfits(accountIds);
}
catch(Exception e){
    throw e;
}

Implementing the Service Layer

To find out how to implement the Service Layer using the Apex Common Library, continue reading here: Implementing the Service Layer with the Apex Common Library . If you’re not interested in utilizing the Apex Common Library, no worries, there are really no frameworks to implement a Service Layer (to my knowledge) because this is literally just a business logic layer so every single orgs service layer will be different. The only thing Apex Common assists with here is abstracting the service layer to assist with Unit Test mocking and to make your service class instantiations more dynamic.

Libraries That Could Be Used for the Service Layer

None to my knowledge although the Apex Common Library provides a good foundation for abstracting your service layers to assist with mocking and more dynamic class instantiations.


Service Layer Examples

Apex Common Example (Suggested)

All three of the below classes are tied together. We’ll go over how this works in the next section.

Task Service Interface

Task Service Class

Task Service Implementation Class


Next Section

Part 8: Implementing the Service Layer with the Apex Common Library

SoC and the Apex Common Library Tutorial Series Part 8: Implementing the Service Layer with the Apex Common Library

Preparation for the rest of this article

There is NO FRAMEWORK that can be made for service layer classes. This is a business logic layer and it will differ everywhere. No two businesses are identical. That being said, if you would like to leverage all of the other benefits of the Apex Common Library (primarily Apex Mocks) and you would like your service classes to be able to leverage the fflib_Application class to allow for dynamic runtime logic generation, you’ll need to structure your classes as outlined below. If you don’t want to leverage these things, then don’t worry about doing what is listed below… but trust me, in the long run it will likely be worth it as your org grows in size.


The Service Interface

For every service layer class you create you will create an interface (or potentially a virtual class you can extend) that your service layer implementation class will implement (more on that below). This interface will have every method in your class represented in it. An example of a service interface is below. Some people like to prefix their interfaces with the letter I (example: ICaseService), however I prefer to postfix it with _I or _Interface as it’s a bit clearer in my opinion.

This methods in this interface should represent all of the public methods you plan to create for this service class. Private methods should not be represented here.

public interface Task_Service_Interface
{
	void createTasks(Set<Id> recordIds, Schema.SObjectType objectType);
}

The Service Layer Class

This class is where things get a little confusing in my opinion, but here’s the gist of it. This is the class you will actually call in your apex controllers (or occasionally domain classes) to actually execute the code… however there are no real implementation details in it (that exists in the implementation class outlined below). The reason this class sits in as a kind of middle man is because we want, no matter what business logic is actually called at run time, for our controller classes, batch classes, domain classes, etc to not need to alter the class they call to get the work done. In the Service Factory section below we’ll see how that becomes a huge factor. Below is an example of the Service Layer class setup.

//This class is what every calling class will actually call to. For more information on the //Application class check out the fflib_Application class
//part of this wiki.
public with sharing class Task_Service
{
	//This literally just calls the Task_Service_Impl class's createTasks method
	global static void createTasks(Set<Id> recordIds, Schema.SObjectType objectType){
		service().createTasks(recordIds, objectType);
	}

	//This gets an instance of the Task_Service_Impl class from our Application class. 
        //This method exists for ease of use in the other methods 
        //in this class
	private static Task_Service_Interface service(){
            return (Task_Service_Interface) 
                   Application.service.newInstance(Task_Service_Interface.class);
	}
}

The Service Implementation Class

This is the concrete business logic implementation. This is effectively the code that isn’t super abstract, but is the more custom built business logic specific to the specific business (or business unit) that needs it to be executed. Basically, this is where your actual business logic should reside. Now, again, you may be asking, but Matt… why not just create a new instance of this class and just use it? Why create some silly interface and some middle man class to call this class. This isn’t gonna be superrrrrrr simple to wrap your head around, but bear with me. In the next section we tie all these classes together and paint the bigger picture. An example of a Service Implementation class is below.

/**
 * @description This is the true implementation of your business logic for your service layer. 
    These impl classes
 * are where all the magic happens. In this case this is a service class that executes the 
   business logic for Abstract
 * Task creation on any theoretical object.
 */

public with sharing class Task_Service_Impl implements Task_Service_Interface
{
	//This method creates tasks and MUST BE IMPLEMENTED since we are implementing the 
        //Task_Service_Interface
	public void createTasks(Set<Id> recordIds, Schema.SObjectType objectType)
	{
		//Getting a new instance of a domain class based purely on the ids of our 
                //records, if these were case
		//ids it would return a Case object domain class, if they were contacts it 
                //would return a contact
		//object domain class
		fflib_ISObjectDomain objectDomain = Application.domain.newInstance(recordIds);

		//Getting a new instance of our selector class based purely on the object type 
                //passed. If we passed in a case
		//object type we would get a case selector, a contact object type a contact 
                //selector, etc.
		fflib_ISObjectSelector objectSelector = 
                Application.selector.newInstance(objectType);

		//We're creating a new unit of work instance from our Application class.
		fflib_ISObjectUnitOfWork unitOfWork = Application.UOW.newInstance();

		//List to hold our records that need tasks created for them
		List<SObject> objectsThatNeedTasks = new List<SObject>();

		//If our selector class is an instance of Task_Selector_Interface (if it 
                //implement the Task_Selector_Interface
		//interface) call the selectRecordsForTasks() method in the class. Otherwise 
                //just call the selectSObjectsById method
		if(objectSelector instanceof  Task_Selector_Interface){
			Task_Selector_Interface taskFieldSelector = 
                        (Task_Selector_Interface)objectSelector;
			objectsThatNeedTasks = taskFieldSelector.selectRecordsForTasks();
		}
		else{
			objectsThatNeedTasks = objectSelector.selectSObjectsById(recordIds);
		}

		//If our domain class is an instance of the Task_Creator_Interface (or 
                //implements the Task_Creator_Interface class)
		//call the createTasks method
		if(objectDomain instanceof Task_Creator_Interface){
			Task_Creator_Interface taskCreator = 
                        (Task_Creator_Interface)objectDomain;
			taskCreator.createTasks(objectsThatNeedTasks, unitOfWork);
		}

		//Try commiting the records we've created and/or updated in our unit of work 
                //(we're basically doing all our DML at
		//once here), else throw an exception.
		try{
			unitOfWork.commitWork();
		}
		catch(Exception e){
			throw e;
		}
	}
}

The fflib_Application.ServiceFactory class

The fflib_Application.ServiceFactory class… what is it and how does it fit in here. Well, if you read through all of Part 4: The fflib_Application Class then you hopefully have some solid background on what it’s used for and why, but it’s a little trickier to conceptualize for the service class so let’s go over it a bit again. Basically it leverages The Factory Pattern to dynamically generate the correct code implementations at run time (when your code is actually running).

This is awesome for tons of stuff, but it’s especially awesome for the service layer. Why? You’ll notice as your Salesforce instance grows so do the amount of interested parties. All of the sudden you’ve gone from one or two business units to 25 different business units and what happens when those businesses need the same type of functionality with differing logic? You could make tons of if else statements determining what the user type is and then calling different methods based on that users type… but maybe there’s an easier way. If you are an ISV (a managed package provider) what I’m about to show you is likely 1000 times more important for you. If your product grows and people start adopting it, you absolutely need a way to allow flexibility in your applications business logic, maybe even allow them to write their own logic and have a way for your code to execute it??

Let’s check out how allllllllllll these pieces come together below.


Tying all the classes together

Alright, let’s tie everything together piece by piece. Pretend we’ve got a custom metadata type that maps our service interfaces to a service class implementation and a custom user permission (or if you don’t wanna pretend you can check it out here). Let’s first start by creating our new class that extends the fflibApplication.ServiceFactory class and overrides its newInstance method.

/*
   @description: This class is an override for the prebuilt fflib_Application.ServiceFactory 
   that allows
   us to dynamically call service classes based on the running users custom permissions.
 */

public with sharing class ServiceFactory extends fflib_Application.ServiceFactory
{
	Map<String, Service_By_User_Type__mdt> servicesByUserPermAndInterface = new 
        Map<String, Service_By_User_Type__mdt>();

	public ServiceFactory(Map<Type, Type> serviceInterfaceByServiceImpl){
		super(serviceInterfaceByServiceImpl);
		this.servicesByUserPermAndInterface = getServicesByUserPermAndInterface();
	}

	//Overriding the fflib_Application.ServiceFactory newInstance method to allow us to 
        //initialize a new service implementation type based on the 
        //running users custom permissions and the interface name passed in.
	public override Object newInstance(Type serviceInterfaceType){
		for(Service_By_User_Type__mdt serviceByUser: 
                servicesByUserPermAndInterface.values()){
			 
                if(servicesByUserPermAndInterface.containsKey(serviceByUser.User_Permission__c 
                  + serviceInterfaceType)){
			 Service_By_User_Type__mdt overrideClass = 
                         servicesByUserPermAndInterface.get(serviceByUser.User_Permission__c + 
                         serviceInterfaceType.getName());
		         return 
                    Type.forName(overrideClass.Service_Implementation_Class__c).newInstance();
			}
		}
		return super.newInstance(serviceInterfaceType);
	}

	//Creating our map of overrides by our user custom permissions
	private Map<String, Service_By_User_Type__mdt> getServicesByUserPermAndInterface(){
		Map<String, Service_By_User_Type__mdt> servicesByUserType = 
                new Map<String, Service_By_User_Type__mdt>();
		for(Service_By_User_Type__mdt serviceByUser: 
                Service_By_User_Type__mdt.getAll().values()){
			//Checking to see if running user has any of the permissions for our 
                        //overrides, if so we put the overrides in a map
			 
         if(FeatureManagement.checkPermission(serviceByUser.User_Permission__c)){
			servicesByUserType.put(serviceByUser.User_Permission__c + 
                        serviceByUser.Service_Interface__c, serviceByUser);
			}
		}
		return servicesByUserType;
	}
}

Cool kewl cool, now that we have our custom ServiceFactory built to manage our overrides based on the running users custom permissions, we can leverage it in the Application Factory class we’ve hopefully built by now like so:

public with sharing class Application
{
       //Domain, Selector and UOW factories have been omitted for brevity, but should be added 
       //to this class

	//This allows us to create a factory for instantiating service classes. You send it 
        //the interface for your service class
	//and it will return the correct service layer class  
        //Exmaple initialization: Object objectService = 
        //Application.service.newInstance(Task_Service_Interface.class);
	public static final fflib_Application.ServiceFactory service =
                  new ServiceFactory(
                    new Map<Type, Type>{Task_Service_Interface.class => 
                                        Task_Service_Impl.class});
}

Ok we’ve done the hardest parts now. Next we need to pretend that we are using the service class interface, service implementation class and service class that we already built earlier (just above you, scroll up to those sections and review them if you forgot), because we’ve about to see how a controller would call this task service we’ve built.

public with sharing class Abstract_Task_Creator_Controller
{
	@AuraEnabled
	public static void createTasks(Id recordId){
		Set<Id> recordIds = new Set<Id>{recordId};
		Schema.SObjectType objectType = recordId.getSobjectType();
		try{
			Task_Service.createTasks(recordIds, objectType);
		}
		catch(Exception e){
			throw new AuraHandledException(e.getMessage());
		}
	}
}

Now you might be wracking your brain right now and being like… ok, so what… but look closer Simba. This controller will literally never grow, neither will your Application class or your ServiceFactory class we’ve built above (well the Application class might, but very little). This Task_Service middle man layer is so abstract you can swap out service implementations on the fly whenever you want and this controller will NEVER NEED TO BE UPDATED (at least not for task service logic)! Basically the only thing that will change at this point is your custom metadata type (object), the custom permissions you map to users and you’ll add more variations of the Task Service Implementation classes throughout time for your various business units that get onboarded and want to use it. However, your controllers (and other places in the code that call the service) will never know the difference. Wyld right. If you’re lost right now lets follow the chain of events step by step in order to clarify some things:

1) Controller calls the Task_Service class’s (the middleman) createTasks() method.
2) Task_Service’s createTasks() method calls its service() method.
3) The service() method uses the Application classes “service” variable, which is an instance of our custom ServiceFactory class (shown above) to create a new instance of our whatever Task Implementation class (which inherits from the Task_Service_Interface class making it of type Task_Service_Interface) is relevant for our users assigned custom permissions by using the newInstance() method the ServiceFactory class overrode.
4) The service variable returns the correct Task Service Implementation for the running user.
5) The createTasks() method is called for whatever Task Service Implementation was determined to be correct for the running user.
6) Tasks are created!

If you’re still shook by all this, please, watch the video where we build all this together step by step and walk through everything. I promise, even if it’s a bit confusing, it’s worth the time to learn.


Next Section

Part 9: The Template Method Pattern