Jeff Douglas - Technology, Coding and Bears... OH MY! » Technology http://blog.jeffdouglas.com Get your head out of your #@! and into the clouds! Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:04:52 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc Using the Salesforce.com OAuth Playground http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/28/using-the-salesforce-oauth-playground/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-the-salesforce-oauth-playground http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/28/using-the-salesforce-oauth-playground/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:39:25 +0000 Jeff Douglas http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/?p=2968 My article on developer.force.com, Using OAuth to Authorize External Applications, shows how to develop external Java applications that use OAuth to access your Saleforce.com data. But what if you want to do the opposite? What if you need to write an application on the Force.com platform that uses your data from Google, Twitter, LinkedIn or TripIt using OAuth? Luckily Jesper Jorgenson at Salesforce.com posted an open source project called sfdc-oauth-playground which is a generic consumer implementation of OAuth as a Force.com App.

The main purpose of this beta project is to show you how to write OAuth signed requests in Apex. There is a managed packaged you can install into your org but if you really want to dig into the guts of OAuth (and who doesn’t??) you’ll need to download and install the source code from the project. The managed package doesn’t afford you to opportunity to modify code or view granular debug statements.

Jesper doesn’t provide much documentation for the project so I’ve put together a short video showing how to get started using Google Accounts and Blogger. Unfortunately different providers implement OAuth to their own liking so you sometimes have to make modifications to the requests being sent over the wire. I ran into a number of issues so hopefully this will assist you in getting up and running with OAuth.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXJxG6zWSZA

 

In case you don’t have time for the video, here are a couple of screenshots outlining the process using the OAuth Consumer Playground application from the managed package.

Create a new OAuth Service (e.g., Blogger) with various URLs for accessing services

oauth-service-unauthorized.png

 

Authorize Salesforce access to Blogger

oauth-service-preauth.png

 

Grant access to Blogger

oauth-service-blogger.png

 

Authorization confirmation

oauth-service-auth.png

 

OAuth Service access tokens

oauth-service-authorized.png

 

Testing the service

oauth-service-test.png

]]> http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/28/using-the-salesforce-oauth-playground/feed/ 0 Email a Document with Salesforce.com http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/22/create-and-email-a-document-with-salesforce-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=create-and-email-a-document-with-salesforce-com http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/22/create-and-email-a-document-with-salesforce-com/#comments Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:39:28 +0000 Jeff Douglas http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/?p=2895 After my last post, Create and Email a PDF with Salesforce.com, I received a few comments whether it was possible to do the same with Document stored in Salesforce.com. Could you choose a Document and then send it via email as an attachment? The short answer is yes! However, I tried to do it from a Force.com Sites page but was not able to get it to work. The document is not marked for internal use and it is marked as an externally available image. I also made sure that the public settings for my Site included read access to documents but still the query for the document returns no results. No time to look at it in depth right now so if anyone has an idea, please send it my way.

DocumentEmailer Visualforce Page

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<apex:page controller="DocumentEmailController">
  <apex:sectionHeader title="Document Example" subtitle="Email a Document" 
    description="Example of how to email a Document."/>
 
  <apex:form >
    <apex:pageMessages />
    <apex:pageBlock title="Document Input">
 
      <apex:pageBlockButtons >
        <apex:commandButton action="{!sendDoc}" value="Send Document"/>
      </apex:pageBlockButtons>
 
      <apex:pageBlockSection >
 
        <apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
            <apex:outputLabel value="Email to send to" for="email"/>
          <apex:inputText value="{!email}" id="email"/>
        </apex:pageBlockSectionItem>
 
        <apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
            <apex:outputLabel value="Document" for="document"/>
            <apex:selectList value="{!documentId}" id="document" size="1">
                 <apex:selectOptions value="{!documents}"/>
            </apex:selectList>
        </apex:pageBlockSectionItem>
 
      </apex:pageBlockSection>
 
    </apex:pageBlock>
  </apex:form>
 
</apex:page>

DocumentEmailController

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public with sharing class DocumentEmailController {
 
  public ID documentId {get;set;}
  public String email {get;set;}
 
  public List<SelectOption> documents {
    get {
      if (documents == null) {
        documents = new List<SelectOption>();
        documents.add(new SelectOption('01570000001NZDn','Cup of Coffee? - DOC'));
        documents.add(new SelectOption('01570000001NZDi','Workflow Cheatsheet -  PDF'));
      }
      return documents;
    }
    set;
  }
 
  public PageReference sendDoc() {
 
    Document doc = [select id, name, body, contenttype, developername, type 
      from Document where id = :documentId];
 
    Messaging.EmailFileAttachment attach = new Messaging.EmailFileAttachment();
    attach.setContentType(doc.contentType);
    attach.setFileName(doc.developerName+'.'+doc.type);
    attach.setInline(false);
    attach.Body = doc.Body;
 
    Messaging.SingleEmailMessage mail = new Messaging.SingleEmailMessage();
    mail.setUseSignature(false);
    mail.setToAddresses(new String[] { email });
    mail.setSubject('Document Email Demo');
    mail.setHtmlBody('Here is the email you requested: '+doc.name);
    mail.setFileAttachments(new Messaging.EmailFileAttachment[] { attach }); 
 
    // Send the email
    Messaging.sendEmail(new Messaging.SingleEmailMessage[] { mail });
 
    ApexPages.addMessage(new ApexPages.Message(ApexPages.Severity.INFO, 'Email with Document sent to '+email));
 
    return null;
 
  }
 
}

Test Class

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@isTest
private class Test_DocumentEmailer {
 
  static Document document;
 
  static {
 
    document = new Document();
    document.Body = Blob.valueOf('Some Text');
    document.ContentType = 'application/pdf';
    document.DeveloperName = 'my_document';
    document.IsPublic = true;
    document.Name = 'My Document';
    document.FolderId = [select id from folder where name = 'My Test Docs'].id;
    insert document;
 
  }
 
  static testMethod void testDocumentEmailer() {
 
    PageReference pref = Page.DocumentEmailer;        
    DocumentEmailController con = new DocumentEmailController();    
 
    Test.startTest();
 
    System.assertEquals(2,con.documents.size());
 
    // populate the field with values
    con.documentId = document.id;
    con.email = 'test@noemail.com';
    // submit the request
    pref = con.sendDoc();
 
    Test.stopTest(); 
 
  }
}


]]> http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/22/create-and-email-a-document-with-salesforce-com/feed/ 2 Create and Email a PDF with Salesforce.com http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/16/create-and-email-a-pdf-with-salesforce-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=create-and-email-a-pdf-with-salesforce-com http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/16/create-and-email-a-pdf-with-salesforce-com/#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:03:15 +0000 Jeff Douglas http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/?p=2883 This is a continuation of my post a couple of days ago, Attach a PDF to a Record in Salesforce, and shows how to dynamically generate a PDF and attach it to an email. The code is fairly similar and has the same issue with testing the PageReference getContent() method.

You can run this demo at my developer site.

PdfEmailer Visualforce Page

The Visualforce page simply allows the user to enter their email address and select a sample Account from the picklist. This is Account that is passed to the PdfGeneratorTemplate Visualforce page to generate the PDF.

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<apex:page controller="PdfEmailController">
  <apex:sectionHeader title="PDF Example" subtitle="Email a PDF" 
    description="Example of how to email a dynamically generated PDF."/>
 
  <apex:form >
    <apex:pageMessages />
    <apex:pageBlock title="PDF Input">
 
      <apex:pageBlockButtons >
        <apex:commandButton action="{!sendPdf}" value="Send PDF"/>
      </apex:pageBlockButtons>
 
      <apex:pageBlockSection >
 
        <apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
            <apex:outputLabel value="Email to send to" for="email"/>
          <apex:inputText value="{!email}" id="email"/>
        </apex:pageBlockSectionItem>
 
        <apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
            <apex:outputLabel value="Account" for="account"/>
            <apex:selectList value="{!accountId}" id="account" size="1">
                 <apex:selectOptions value="{!accounts}"/>
            </apex:selectList>
        </apex:pageBlockSectionItem>
 
      </apex:pageBlockSection>
 
    </apex:pageBlock>
  </apex:form>
 
</apex:page>

PdfEmailerController

The Controller passes the Account ID that the user entered as a parameter for the Visualforce page being generated. It let creates the attachment from the PDF content. The Body of the attachment uses the Blob returned from the PageReference’s getContent method. You could also use the getContentAsPDF method which always returns the page as a PDF, regardless of the component’s renderAs attribute. However, this method always seems to throw an error in the test class. See the PageReference documentation for more info. The method then constructs the SimpleEmailMessage object and then sends it on its way to the recipient’s inbox.

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public with sharing class PdfEmailController {
 
  public ID accountId {get;set;}
  public String email {get;set;}
 
  public List<SelectOption> accounts {
    get {
      if (accounts == null) {
        accounts = new List<SelectOption>();
        accounts.add(new SelectOption('0017000000LgRMb','United Oil & Gas Corp.'));
        accounts.add(new SelectOption('0017000000LgRMV','Burlington Textiles Corp of America'));
      }
      return accounts;
    }
    set;
  }
 
  public PageReference sendPdf() {
 
    PageReference pdf = Page.PdfGeneratorTemplate;
    // add parent id to the parameters for standardcontroller
    pdf.getParameters().put('id',accountId);
 
    // the contents of the attachment from the pdf
    Blob body;
 
    try {
 
      // returns the output of the page as a PDF
      body = pdf.getContent();
 
    // need to pass unit test -- current bug  
    } catch (VisualforceException e) {
      body = Blob.valueOf('Some Text');
    }
 
    Messaging.EmailFileAttachment attach = new Messaging.EmailFileAttachment();
    attach.setContentType('application/pdf');
    attach.setFileName('testPdf.pdf');
    attach.setInline(false);
    attach.Body = body;
 
    Messaging.SingleEmailMessage mail = new Messaging.SingleEmailMessage();
    mail.setUseSignature(false);
    mail.setToAddresses(new String[] { email });
    mail.setSubject('PDF Email Demo');
    mail.setHtmlBody('Here is the email you requested! Check the attachment!');
    mail.setFileAttachments(new Messaging.EmailFileAttachment[] { attach }); 
 
    // Send the email
    Messaging.sendEmail(new Messaging.SingleEmailMessage[] { mail });
 
    ApexPages.addMessage(new ApexPages.Message(ApexPages.Severity.INFO, 'Email with PDF sent to '+email));
 
    return null;
 
  }
 
}

PdfGeneratorTemplate Visualforce Page

This is the Visualforce page that is generated in the Controller. It simply uses the StandardController and displays the Account name for the ID passed to it. 

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<apex:page standardController="Account" renderAs="pdf">
  <h1>Congratulations!!</h1>
  <p>You created a PDF for {!account.name}</p>
</apex:page>

Test Class 

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@isTest
private class Test_PdfEmailController {
 
  static Account account;
 
  static {
 
    account = new Account();
    account.Name = 'Test Account';
    insert account;
 
  }
 
  static testMethod void testPdfEmailer() {
 
    PageReference pref = Page.PdfEmailer;
    pref.getParameters().put('id',account.id);
    Test.setCurrentPage(pref);
 
    PdfEmailController con = new PdfEmailController();    
 
    Test.startTest();
 
    System.assertEquals(2,con.accounts.size());
 
    // populate the field with values
    con.accountId = account.id;
    con.email = 'test@noemail.com';
    // submit the record
    pref = con.sendPdf();
 
    Test.stopTest(); 
 
  }
}

]]> http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/16/create-and-email-a-pdf-with-salesforce-com/feed/ 2 Attach a PDF to a Record in Salesforce http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/14/attach-a-pdf-to-a-record-in-salesforce/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=attach-a-pdf-to-a-record-in-salesforce http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/14/attach-a-pdf-to-a-record-in-salesforce/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:57:33 +0000 Jeff Douglas http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/?p=2854 Salesforce.com makes it extremely easy to generate PDF documents on the fly by simply using the renderAs=”pdf” attribute for the <apex:page> component. It’s also a snap to attach these PDFs to records as Attachments. Below is a small Visualforce page and Controller that generates a PDF and saves it to an Account.

Note: there is a small issue when it comes to testing the Controller. Salesforce currently throws an error (Salesforce.com Error “Unable to retrieve object”) when getContent or getContentAsPDF is called from a test method. There’s an Idea to make this work properly. I encourage everyone to vote for this.

PdfGenerator Visualforce Page

The Visualforce page allows the users to enter the ID of the Account to attach the PDF to as well as the name of the PDF. You could just have easily used a Controller Extension instead of entering the ID for the Account but I went this route for simplicity.

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<apex:page controller="PdfGeneratorController">
  <apex:sectionHeader title="PDF Example" subtitle="Attach a PDF" 
    description="Example of how to attach a PDF to a record."/>
 
  <apex:form >
    <apex:pageBlock title="PDF Input">
 
      <apex:pageBlockButtons >
        <apex:commandButton action="{!savePdf}" value="Save PDF"/>
      </apex:pageBlockButtons>
      <apex:pageMessages />
 
      <apex:pageBlockSection >
 
        <apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
            <apex:outputLabel value="File Name" for="pdfName"/>
          <apex:inputText value="{!pdfName}" id="pdfName"/>
        </apex:pageBlockSectionItem>
 
        <apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
            <apex:outputLabel value="Account ID" for="id"/>
          <apex:inputText value="{!parentId}" id="id"/>
        </apex:pageBlockSectionItem>
 
      </apex:pageBlockSection>
 
    </apex:pageBlock>
  </apex:form>
 
</apex:page>

PdfGeneratorController Custom Controller

The Controller passes the Account ID that the user entered as a parameter for the Visualforce page being generated. It then creates a new Attachment object and sets some attributes. It sets the ParentId to the value of the Account ID that the user entered so that the PDF is attached to that record. The Body of the attachment uses the Blob returned from the PageReference’s getContent method. You could also use the getContentAsPDF method which always returns the page as a PDF, regardless of the <apex:page> component’s renderAs attribute. However, this method always seems to throw an error in the test class. See the PageReference documentation for more info. The method then redirects the user to the Account page so they can view the PDF attachment.

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public with sharing class PdfGeneratorController {
 
  public ID parentId {get;set;}
  public String pdfName {get;set;}
 
  public PageReference savePdf() {
 
    PageReference pdf = Page.PdfGeneratorTemplate;
    // add parent id to the parameters for standardcontroller
    pdf.getParameters().put('id',parentId);
 
    // create the new attachment
    Attachment attach = new Attachment();
 
    // the contents of the attachment from the pdf
    Blob body;
 
    try {
 
        // returns the output of the page as a PDF
    	body = pdf.getContent();
 
    // need to pass unit test -- current bug	
    } catch (VisualforceException e) {
    	body = Blob.valueOf('Some Text');
    }
 
    attach.Body = body;
    // add the user entered name
    attach.Name = pdfName;
    attach.IsPrivate = false;
    // attach the pdf to the account
    attach.ParentId = parentId;
    insert attach;
 
    // send the user to the account to view results
    return new PageReference('/'+parentId);
 
  }
 
}

PdfGeneratorTemplate Visualforce Page

This is the Visualforce page that is generated in the Controller. It simply uses the StandardController and displays the Account name for the ID passed to it. 

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<apex:page standardController="Account" renderAs="pdf">
  <h1>Congratulations!!</h1>
  <p>You created a PDF for {!account.name}</p>
</apex:page>

Test Class

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@isTest
private class Test_PdfGeneratorController {
 
  static Account account;
 
  static {
 
    account = new Account();
    account.Name = 'Test Account';
    insert account;
 
  }
 
  static testMethod void testPdfGenerator() {
 
    PageReference pref = Page.PdfGenerator;
    pref.getParameters().put('id',account.id);
    Test.setCurrentPage(pref);
 
    PdfGeneratorController con = new PdfGeneratorController();    
 
    Test.startTest();
 
    // populate the field with values
    con.parentId = account.id;
    con.pdfName = 'My Test PDF';
 
    // submit the record
    pref = con.savePdf();
 
    // assert that they were sent to the correct page
    System.assertEquals(pref.getUrl(),'/'+account.id);
 
    // assert that an attachment exists for the record
    System.assertEquals(1,[select count() from attachment where parentId = :account.id]);
 
    Test.stopTest(); 
 
  }
}

]]> http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/14/attach-a-pdf-to-a-record-in-salesforce/feed/ 4 Building a Dynamic Search Page in Visualforce http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/13/building-a-dynamic-search-page-in-visualforce/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=building-a-dynamic-search-page-in-visualforce http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/13/building-a-dynamic-search-page-in-visualforce/#comments Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:31:34 +0000 Jeff Douglas http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/?p=2778 I brushed this code off and thought it might be useful to someone as a starting point for a dynamic search page. It has some cool functionality including passing search criteria via Javascript to the controller, search as you type, sorting of results by clicking on the column header plus much more. Hope you find it useful.

You can run this demo at my developer site.

Some of the interesting features of the Visualforce page and Apex controller include:

  • Instead of the typical overhead of using getters/setters in the controller to maintain the variables for the search form, I used Dave Carroll’s blog as an example to pass the variables via Javascript.
  • Since I’m using Javascript to pass my parameters, I can get fancy and make the search form more dynamic by running the search as the user types or selects an option in the picklist. No submit button is required.
  • Users can click on the column headers to toggle the direction of the search results by using a CommandLink component and passing the column name.
  • Build the picklist using Dynamic Apex’s Describe functionality so that it’s maintenance free.
  • Perform the search against multiple fields including multi-select picklists using dynamic SOQL and preventing SOQL injection attacks.

ContactSearchController

Take a look at the Apex code below. The search interaction is split up between two separate but integral parts. When the search is fired from the Visualforce page via Javascript, the SOQL is constructed in the runSearch() method and is then passed to the runQuery() method to execute. The SOQL string is persisted so that when the user clicks on the table column the same SOQL can be issued again in the toggleSort() method but ordered by a different field name and sort direction.

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public with sharing class ContactSearchController {
 
  // the soql without the order and limit
  private String soql {get;set;}
  // the collection of contacts to display
  public List<Contact> contacts {get;set;}
 
  // the current sort direction. defaults to asc
  public String sortDir {
    get  { if (sortDir == null) {  sortDir = 'asc'; } return sortDir;  }
    set;
  }
 
  // the current field to sort by. defaults to last name
  public String sortField {
    get  { if (sortField == null) {sortField = 'lastName'; } return sortField;  }
    set;
  }
 
  // format the soql for display on the visualforce page
  public String debugSoql {
    get { return soql + ' order by ' + sortField + ' ' + sortDir + ' limit 20'; }
    set;
  }
 
  // init the controller and display some sample data when the page loads
  public ContactSearchController() {
    soql = 'select firstname, lastname, account.name, interested_technologies__c from contact where account.name != null';
    runQuery();
  }
 
  // toggles the sorting of query from asc<-->desc
  public void toggleSort() {
    // simply toggle the direction
    sortDir = sortDir.equals('asc') ? 'desc' : 'asc';
    // run the query again
    runQuery();
  }
 
  // runs the actual query
  public void runQuery() {
 
    try {
      contacts = Database.query(soql + ' order by ' + sortField + ' ' + sortDir + ' limit 20');
    } catch (Exception e) {
      ApexPages.addMessage(new ApexPages.Message(ApexPages.Severity.ERROR, 'Ooops!'));
    }
 
  }
 
  // runs the search with parameters passed via Javascript
  public PageReference runSearch() {
 
    String firstName = Apexpages.currentPage().getParameters().get('firstname');
    String lastName = Apexpages.currentPage().getParameters().get('lastname');
    String accountName = Apexpages.currentPage().getParameters().get('accountName');
    String technology = Apexpages.currentPage().getParameters().get('technology');
 
    soql = 'select firstname, lastname, account.name, interested_technologies__c from contact where account.name != null';
    if (!firstName.equals(''))
      soql += ' and firstname LIKE \''+String.escapeSingleQuotes(firstName)+'%\'';
    if (!lastName.equals(''))
      soql += ' and lastname LIKE \''+String.escapeSingleQuotes(lastName)+'%\'';
    if (!accountName.equals(''))
      soql += ' and account.name LIKE \''+String.escapeSingleQuotes(accountName)+'%\'';  
    if (!technology.equals(''))
      soql += ' and interested_technologies__c includes (\''+technology+'\')';
 
    // run the query again
    runQuery();
 
    return null;
  }
 
  // use apex describe to build the picklist values
  public List<String> technologies {
    get {
      if (technologies == null) {
 
        technologies = new List<String>();
        Schema.DescribeFieldResult field = Contact.interested_technologies__c.getDescribe();
 
        for (Schema.PicklistEntry f : field.getPicklistValues())
          technologies.add(f.getLabel());
 
      }
      return technologies;          
    }
    set;
  }
 
}

CustomerSearch Visualforce Page

The Visualforce page has three sections: 1) a search form, 2) a results blockTable and 3) a debug panel displaying the SOQL that was executed.

The search form has a number of fields that fire the Javascript search using the onkeyup and onchange events. Instead of each form field passing the current values to actionFunction’s Javascript method, for ease of use, each form field calls the doSearch() function that gathers up the values and submits them. When the actionFunction renders it creates a Javascript function that POSTs the values to the controller in the same manner as CommandLink or CommandButton.

The search results BlockTable is rerendered when the search is submitted to the controller so that the results display properly. Users can click on the column headers to reorder the results of the query. This uses a CommandLink to pass the sort field to the controller and toggle the sort direction.

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<apex:page controller="ContactSearchController" sidebar="false">
 
  <apex:form >
  <apex:pageMessages id="errors" />
 
  <apex:pageBlock title="Find Me A Customer!" mode="edit">
 
  <table width="100%" border="0">
  <tr>  
    <td width="200" valign="top">
 
      <apex:pageBlock title="Parameters" mode="edit" id="criteria">
 
      <script type="text/javascript">
      function doSearch() {
        searchServer(
          document.getElementById("firstName").value,
          document.getElementById("lastName").value,
          document.getElementById("accountName").value,
          document.getElementById("technology").options[document.getElementById("technology").selectedIndex].value
          );
      }
      </script> 
 
      <apex:actionFunction name="searchServer" action="{!runSearch}" rerender="results,debug,errors">
          <apex:param name="firstName" value="" />
          <apex:param name="lastName" value="" />
          <apex:param name="accountName" value="" />
          <apex:param name="technology" value="" />
      </apex:actionFunction>
 
      <table cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
      <tr>
        <td style="font-weight:bold;">First Name<br/>
        <input type="text" id="firstName" onkeyup="doSearch();"/>
        </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td style="font-weight:bold;">Last Name<br/>
        <input type="text" id="lastName" onkeyup="doSearch();"/>
        </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td style="font-weight:bold;">Account<br/>
        <input type="text" id="accountName" onkeyup="doSearch();"/>
        </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td style="font-weight:bold;">Interested Technologies<br/>
          <select id="technology" onchange="doSearch();">
            <option value=""></option>
            <apex:repeat value="{!technologies}" var="tech">
              <option value="{!tech}">{!tech}</option>
            </apex:repeat>
          </select>
        </td>
      </tr>
      </table>
 
      </apex:pageBlock>
 
    </td>
    <td valign="top">
 
    <apex:pageBlock mode="edit" id="results">
 
        <apex:pageBlockTable value="{!contacts}" var="contact">
 
            <apex:column >
                <apex:facet name="header">
                    <apex:commandLink value="First Name" action="{!toggleSort}" rerender="results,debug">
                        <apex:param name="sortField" value="firstName" assignTo="{!sortField}"/>
                    </apex:commandLink>
                </apex:facet>
                <apex:outputField value="{!contact.firstName}"/>
            </apex:column>
 
            <apex:column >
                <apex:facet name="header">
                    <apex:commandLink value="Last Name" action="{!toggleSort}" rerender="results,debug">
                        <apex:param name="sortField" value="lastName" assignTo="{!sortField}"/>
                    </apex:commandLink>
                </apex:facet>
                <apex:outputField value="{!contact.lastName}"/>
            </apex:column>
 
            <apex:column >
                <apex:facet name="header">
                    <apex:commandLink value="Account" action="{!toggleSort}" rerender="results,debug">
                        <apex:param name="sortField" value="account.name" assignTo="{!sortField}"/>
                    </apex:commandLink>
                </apex:facet>
                <apex:outputField value="{!contact.account.name}"/>
            </apex:column>
 
            <apex:column >
                <apex:facet name="header">
                    <apex:commandLink value="Technologies" action="{!toggleSort}" rerender="results,debug">
                        <apex:param name="sortField" value="interested_technologies__c" assignTo="{!sortField}"/>
                    </apex:commandLink>
                </apex:facet>
                <apex:outputField value="{!contact.Interested_Technologies__c}"/>
            </apex:column>
 
        </apex:pageBlockTable>
 
    </apex:pageBlock>
 
    </td>
  </tr>
  </table>
 
  <apex:pageBlock title="Debug - SOQL" id="debug">
      <apex:outputText value="{!debugSoql}" />           
  </apex:pageBlock>    
 
  </apex:pageBlock>
 
  </apex:form>
 
</apex:page>
]]> http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/13/building-a-dynamic-search-page-in-visualforce/feed/ 10 Using RSA-SHA1 with Salesforce Crypto Class http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/06/using-rsa-sha1-with-salesforce-crypto-class/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-rsa-sha1-with-salesforce-crypto-class http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/06/using-rsa-sha1-with-salesforce-crypto-class/#comments Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:28:31 +0000 Jeff Douglas http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/?p=2754 This is a rather obscure post but it will definitely come in handy to someone trying to use the RSA-SHA1 algorithm with the Salesforce Crypto class. I’m spent the past two days trying to hook up OAuth using Apex and various Google Services. The standard HMAC-SHA1 algorithm is fairly straight forward with OAuth and Google but when you are required to register a domain and upload a certificate… well things get somewhat hairy. There’s very little documentation on the RSA-SHA2 algorithm and I could only find one relevant post on the topic.

According to the Crypto docs, the arguments for the sign method are an algorithm name (i.e., RSA-SHA1), an input Blob (the string to encrypt) and a privateKey Blob. The value of privateKey must be decoded using the EncodingUtilbase64Decode method, and should be in RSA’s PKCS #8 (1.2) Private-Key Information Syntax Standard form.

The sample code from the docs doesn’t help determining how to obtain the privateKey:

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String algorithmName = 'RSA';
String key = 'pkcs8 format private key';
Blob privateKey = EncodingUtil.base64Decode(key);
Blob input = Blob.valueOf('12345qwerty');
Crypto.sign(algorithmName, input, privateKey);

So after a couple of days of trial and error, swearing and sticking needles in my eyes, I finally came up with the solution for Google. It may not apply to other services but the methodology is roughly the same for the privateKey.

The first step is to generate a self-signing public certificate and private key. You can find more info here. Open terminal and run the following:

openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:1024 -shal -subj ‘/C=US/ST=CA/L=San Mateo/CN=www.appirio.com’ -keyout key-mycompanyrsa.pem -out cert-mycompanyrsa.pem

This will spit out a cert file (cert-mycompanyrsa.pem) and private key file (key-mycompanyrsa.pem). Then upload the cert to your domain for the Google account. This will generate a consumer key and a consumer secret for your application.

Now here was my mistake. I was opening the private key file (key-mycompanyrsa.pem) and using the contents of this file in my Apex code for the privateKey Blob value. Google was choking when creating the OAuth request token saying that the signature was incorrect: signature_invalid.

Here’s the fix. You need to use the private key file (key-mycompanyrsa.pem) with the openssl pkcs8 command to process the private keys into PKCS#8 format.

Open terminal again and run:

openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -nocrypt -in key-mycompanyrsa.pem -outform PEM

This will display a new private key in terminal and THIS is the value you use for the privateKey argument for the sign method. Just copy everything betweek the “begin” line and “end” line.


]]> http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/06/using-rsa-sha1-with-salesforce-crypto-class/feed/ 0 Error Compiling Salesforce Metadata API with WSC http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/01/error-compiling-salesforce-metadata-api-with-wsc/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=error-compiling-salesforce-metadata-api-with-wsc http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/01/error-compiling-salesforce-metadata-api-with-wsc/#comments Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:00:52 +0000 Jeff Douglas http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/01/error-compiling-salesforce-metadata-api-with-wsc/ This might not be relevant right now but you may find it useful in the near future. I’m tinkering with an app that spits out documentation for an org. I really hate doing documentation and am quite lazy so I thought I’d write something to allow my computer to do my work for me.

I ran into a small issue when trying to compile the Metadata WSDL with the Force.com Web Services Connector so I thought I’d post my fix.

So to use the Metadata API with the WSC, first download the Metadata WSDL from your org and the latest WSC jar from the project. Now issue something like the following to generate the stub code from the WSDL:

java -classpath wsc-19.jar com.sforce.ws.tools.wsdlc metadata.wsdl metadata.jar

Unfortunately this results in an error similar to:

-dir/com/sforce/soap/metadata/Encoding.java:12: ‘} ‘ expected UTF-8,


The error is thrown because the WSDL contains some hyphens that is making the compiler puke. You can fix the issue by replacing the hyphens in the Metadata WSDL with underscores, saving the WSDL and then compiling the stub code again.

Here’s the offending portion of the Metadata WSDL.


]]> http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/07/01/error-compiling-salesforce-metadata-api-with-wsc/feed/ 3 Any Interest in a Chatter / Spring / App Engine Tutorial? http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/06/30/any-interest-in-a-chatter-spring-app-engine-tutorial/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=any-interest-in-a-chatter-spring-app-engine-tutorial http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/06/30/any-interest-in-a-chatter-spring-app-engine-tutorial/#comments Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:35:44 +0000 Jeff Douglas http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/?p=2735 Following up on yesterday’s post, Get Ready for VMForce – Here’s How!, I was thinking about putting together a series of tutorials on building a Chatter app on App Engine using Spring MVC with JDO. This will take considerable effort and I’m just wondering if it would be valuable to the Salesforce.com community.
Tell me what you think.



]]> http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/06/30/any-interest-in-a-chatter-spring-app-engine-tutorial/feed/ 1 Get Ready for VMForce – Here’s How! http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/06/29/get-ready-for-vmforce/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=get-ready-for-vmforce http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/06/29/get-ready-for-vmforce/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:59:41 +0000 Jeff Douglas http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/?p=2730 VMForce is coming (sometime in the near future) so what can you do to get started now? If I was a betting man (with inside info), here is what I’d do to get ready.

Start Building on Google App Engine
My guess is that VMForce will look a little like Google App Engine. You’ll probably have access to a wide range of Java libaries but not all of them. Based upon Salesforce.com’s current model you can expect that there will be some platform governors and limits in place. This should provide you with some experience and a working knowledge of some issues you may run into. If you want to get up and running quickly you can always buy my book Beginning Java Google App Engine (yes… blatant plug).

Start Learning Spring
I would probably start with Spring MVC or Spring Web Flow 2 initially. The good thing is that most of Spring also runs on App Engine so you should be able to move any apps you write on App Engine to VMForce. Here’s a great article to get you started with Spring MVC.

I would also download the SpringSource Tool Suite which is a Eclipse plugin for Spring development. It should fit in nicely with the Force.com IDE.

You might also want to dowload Spring’s tc Server Developer Edition. If you are using App Engine you can develop locally but you might also want to check out tc Server. The key component of tc Server Developer Edition is the Spring Insight console, a dashboard view of real-time Spring application performance metrics. Without changing code, developers can use Spring Insight to detect, analyze and diagnose application performance issues right from the desktops. This was demoed at Google IO and it was very slick! There’s a really cool video if you want to see how it works.

Dig into Persistence Layers
You’ll definitely want to start working with a persistance layer like JDO, JPA or Hibernate. Based upon some recent comments from Salesforce.com, I would look at JPA first.

Develop with the Force.com Web Service Connector (WSC)
Most developers are familiar with the WS-APIs but you should really start looking at the Force.com Web Service Connector. I’m writing an article for developer.force.com on how to use the WSC so keep an eye out for that shortly.

Try Spring Roo
If you have some extra time you might want to look into Spring Roo. Roo is a lightweight developer tool that allows you to build apps in minutes. They demoed Roo and Google Web Toolkit together at Google IO with impressive results.


]]> http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/06/29/get-ready-for-vmforce/feed/ 6 Sharing Controller Context with a Visualforce Popup http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/06/17/sharing-controller-context-with-a-visualforce-popup/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sharing-controller-context-with-a-visualforce-popup http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/06/17/sharing-controller-context-with-a-visualforce-popup/#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:11:58 +0000 Jeff Douglas http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/06/17/sharing-controller-context-with-a-visualforce-popup/

“How do I popup a dialog in Visualforce”.

I’m not sure what the deal is but this week I’ve received 3 emails asking me how to open a Visualforce popop window from a Visualforce page but both running in the same session. The question is asked fairly often on the message boards but there isn’t a native solution.

The use case is that you have a Visualforce page with a commandbutton that launches a Visualforce popup. You want the popup to be able to access the controller’s context so you can share state. Unfortunately this is not currently possible with Visualforce and Apex. Opening a new window will start a new request which initializes a new instance of the controller. You could pass some variables to the new controller via Javascript but making a callback to the opening Visualforce is tedious as best.

Depending on what your popup needs to do, the best solution might be to create a modal instead of a new Visualforce page. Dave Carroll has a great article titled, “Modal Dialogs in Visualforce using the Yahoo! User Interface Library“, that shows how to use an In-Page DIV or Hidden DIV to create the modal. You can probably accomplish the same effect with other libraries but Dave’s solution with YUI! is straight-forward, simple and well documented.


]]> http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/06/17/sharing-controller-context-with-a-visualforce-popup/feed/ 0