Easily Search and Edit Records with Visualforce

April 7th, 2010

I tend to over think Visualforce development sometimes and make it harder than it should be. Development with Force.com is surprisingly easy, elegant and quick. For example I recently needed to develop a way for the users to search for records and update specific values. Users should be able to search for records by keyword search, view multiple matching records, update values for multiple records, commit the changes to the database and check for validation errors.

Now if I was doing this in Java I’d need to:

Create a JSP for the UI
Create a bean to model the data
Implement a Javascript framework for form validation
Write a DAO layer of to handle the search, retrieval and persisting of records
Write a Servlet to control the entire process

Force.com makes developing this type of interface a snap. Using only a single Visualforce page and an Apex controller you can whip up the following in no time.

Force.com provides the data model (custom object), the search functionality (SOQL/SOSL) and the DAO layer (DML) for you so all you have to do is implement the business logic and process flow. One of my favorite features of Visualforce is the baked-in form validation. Gone are the days when you had to implement validation in each page you developed and then always remember to update the rules when changes are made. You simply define the fields at the object level with all of its rules and datatype specifics. When developing your Visualforce page, by simply using the standard components you invoke the validation inherit in the platform as well as some nifty Ajax eye-candy. You can focus on the business requirements and not the low level data integrity requirements.

So here is the code for the Visualforce page and Apex controller in case anyone wants to use it for a starting point.

<apex:page standardController="MyObject__c" extensions="ItemEditController">
  <apex:sectionHeader title="{!MyObject__c.Name}" subtitle="Edit Records"/>
  <apex:form >
    <apex:pageBlock mode="edit" id="block">
 
      <apex:pageBlockButtons location="both">
        <apex:commandButton action="{!save}" value="Save Records"/>
        <apex:commandButton action="{!cancel}" value="Cancel"/>
      </apex:pageBlockButtons>
      <apex:pageMessages />
 
      <apex:pageBlockSection >
        <apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
          <apex:outputLabel for="searchText">Keyword</apex:outputLabel>
          <apex:panelGroup >
          <apex:inputText id="searchText" value="{!searchText}"/>
          <apex:commandButton value="Search" action="{!search}" rerender="block" status="status"/>
          </apex:panelGroup>
        </apex:pageBlockSectionItem>
      </apex:pageBlockSection><br/>
 
      <apex:actionStatus id="status" startText="Searching... please wait..."/>
      <apex:pageBlockSection title="Search Results" id="resultsBlock" columns="1">
        <apex:pageBlockTable value="{!searchResults}" var="item" rendered="{!NOT(ISNULL(searchResults))}">
          <apex:column value="{!item.Name}" headerValue="Item" width="100"/>
          <apex:column headerValue="Value" width="200">
            <apex:inputField value="{!item.Value__c}"/>
          </apex:column>
        </apex:pageBlockTable>
      </apex:pageBlockSection>
    </apex:pageBlock>
  </apex:form>
</apex:page>

public with sharing class ItemEditController {
 
  private ApexPages.StandardController controller {get; set;}
  public List<itemObject__c> searchResults {get;set;}
  public string searchText {get;set;}
 
  // standard controller - could also just use custom controller
  public ItemEditController(ApexPages.StandardController controller) { }
 
  // fired when the search button is clicked
  public PageReference search() {
    String qry = 'select id, name, value__c from ItemObject__c ' +
      'where name LIKE \'%'+searchText+'%\' order by name';
    searchResults = Database.query(qry);
    return null;
  }
 
  // fired when the save records button is clicked
  public PageReference save() {
 
    try {
      update searchResults;
    } Catch (DMLException e) {
      ApexPages.addMessages(e);
      return null;
    }
 
    return new PageReference('/'+ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get('id'));
  }
 
  // takes user back to main record
  public PageReference cancel() {
    return new PageReference('/'+ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get('id'));
  }
 
}

Categories: Apex, Code Sample, Salesforce, Visualforce

16 Comments

Joe Ferraro April 7th, 2010
Great stuff, Jeff. I did notice that you’re defining the cancel method in your controller extension, which effectively overrides that method. You should simply be able to call {!cancel} in your VF page when using the standard controller. Anyway, as always, very helpful.
Jeff Douglas April 7th, 2010
Great catch Joe and you are absolutely right!! I “cleansed” this code before using it in the post and should have noticed. My original cancel method did some other stuff as well. Thanks for the input.
Glenn Weinstein April 7th, 2010
A lot of functionality for a little code. And it’s nice and clean. I love Force.com. And JeffD
Jeff Douglas April 7th, 2010
Thanks boss!
Jason Carlson April 7th, 2010
Another great post Jeff. I actually have a need to build this functionality in a VF page today so very timely
Jeff Douglas April 7th, 2010
And you got the starter code for free!! What a deal.
niks April 30th, 2010
Hi Jeff thankyou soo much for the information, I tried the “Document upload VF” which you have give in here, it really worked very well. but when I tried the other ” Search and Edit Records with Visualforce” with my position custom object. I got an error “Unknown property ‘searchText’”….
it is just an output label nd shudnt give an error rgt!!!

hav a great week end.
Andy Skelton May 5th, 2010
This is awesome. I have been trying to figure out how to do this and I was making it way to hard. Thanks.
Jd May 5th, 2010
Wow. This is awesome.
Neeru June 13th, 2010
Hello.I created custom controller and i need to perform the edit and cancel action on this.Could me help about this.
John Taylor November 19th, 2010
Hi Jeff,

Been using ideas and code sample from your site for a while now and have come across the need to use this. It pretty late so I must be missing something simple here but I keep getting the same error:

“Attempt to de-reference a null object

An unexpected error has occurred. Your development organization has been notified. ”

Any ideas off the top of your head that I could be doing wrong,

Many Thanks
Charan January 12th, 2011
Hi, Jeff

Like Taylor, Me too noticed the same error when tried to execute the code. Kindly help me out, how to overcome.
nitin June 22nd, 2011
I am getting error :-

Error: MyObject__c does not exist.

Thanks,
Javed Goury June 23rd, 2011
Great work Jeff !!.. m great fan of u
Jeff Douglas July 21st, 2011
@Nitin, MyObject__c is just a custom object that I used for demo purposes. Please replace with one of your custom or standard objects.
swarupa July 29th, 2011
Thanks………….Really very useful.