A blog from the Developer Relations team.

Unit Test Scoping in Spring ’12

There are several pitfalls that developers can fall into when writing unit tests, and traditionally speaking one of the easiest to fall into can be coding with a reliance on existing data.  So for instance, you want to to prove that your SOQL is correctly getting data from your custom object – this unit test might seem relatively innocent:
List<Furniture__c> dressers = [SELECT ID, Name, Type__c from Furniture__c where Type__c =: dresserFilter LIMIT 10];
System.assertNotEquals(dressers.size(),0);

Which works great in the sandbox where you’ve been developing your custom furniture application with test data, but might instantly break when you move… Continue reading

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Quick Tip – Public RESTful Web Services on Force.com Sites

A little while ago, Paul McGurn blogged how to create a public (SOAP-based) web service via a Force.com Site. As Paul explains, you add your web service class to the Enabled Apex Classes in the Site’s Public Access Settings. You’ll also need to add the appropriate object and field-level permissions for any data you will be exposing; remembering, of course, that this web service will be accessible without any authentication!

As I was setting up a WebHook the other day, I realized that the same principle applies to Apex REST Methods – add the class and any… Continue reading

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The ABC of Cloud Security

At 7am and 10am Pacific Time this Thursday, Feb 23, Adam Torman, Bud Vieira and Chuck Mortimore (otherwise known as the ABC of security at salesforce.com) will be presenting Security in the Cloud: Identity & Access Management for Database.com, a developer-eye view of platform security.

From OAuth, through user profiles, roles and permission sets, right down to record-level controls, Adam, Bud and Chuck will explain how the platform (Database.com and Force.com) authenticates users, authorizes applications and controls access to data via a simple, flexible sharing model.

Whether you’re writing a Force.com app in Apex, a Heroku app in… Continue reading

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Sign-up for the free 1-on-1 Code Consultations at the 3/15 Cloudstock Developer Event

Are you registered for the Cloudstock Developer Conference on March 15 in San Francisco? If so, then you’re invited to sign-up for a free one-on-one code consultation. If not, register for the free event first. Take the opportunity to meet with a  Force.com expert for 30 minutes in a private code consultation, receive best practice coding and architecting advice, and bring and have your code reviewed. Since availability is limited, we encourage you to reserve your timeslot now… Continue reading

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Social Enterprise Blueprints

Social Enterprise BlueprintsSocial Enterprise Blueprints

Cloudforce + Cloudstock is in San Francisco, on March 15th. I am presenting a session titled Social Enterprise Blueprints. This session is going to provide a lightweight methodology designed for individuals looking at how to begin implementing the Social Enterprise. Continue reading

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Tweets of the Week

Here our some of our favorite tweets of the past week from the world of Force.com. Follow @forcedotcom to keep up with these characters!

  @michaelforce

@forcedotcom FunFact: you can use merge fields in CSS on #visualforce pages, e.g. .myClass{ width: {!record.percentage__c}%; }

@karanrajs

@ericakuhl @salesforce happy to share my knowledge.”Behind a every successful developer,there is salesforce community” :)

  @BotosCloud #SalesforceIceCream There’s a bunch of #forcedotcom guys in the corner who always top it with bacon and oatmeal. @Kwongerific

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Build Social Applications with the Force.com Toolkit for Facebook

Just over a year ago, Quinton announced the first beta release of the Force.com Toolkit for Facebook, an Apex Code library allowing Force.com applications to read social data from Facebook via the Facebook Graph API.

That first version was quickly followed by an update adding the ability to create posts, comments, likes and more. Despite the ‘beta’ tag, those releases saw rapid uptake, with hundreds of downloads of the unmanaged package, not to mention several forks of the GitHub project. Today I’m pleased to rip the beta tag off with a third release!

This new version allows you… Continue reading

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Are you a server-side or client-side developer?

So – are you a server-side or client-side developer? What if I said that was an archaic way to classify application development. I believe that the clear red lines that used to separate client-side and server-side application development are increasingly blurring. In order to be an effective application developer in this day and age, you need to be at least comfortable (if not proficient) at both ends of the HTTP connection. Let me explain.

Not to go all ‘grandpa sitting on the rocker’ on you, but back in the day when I first started programming, you picked your sides early. You were either a server-side… Continue reading

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Learn How to Deploy to Heroku and Other Engineering Best Practices

Ready to take your software development to the next level? All of us are well aware that knowing how to write code is not the same as engineering software. With Agile methodologies dominant in the start-up and emergent technology world today, understanding the process and becoming a practitioner is an essential skill set.

Professors Armando Fox and David Patterson of UC Berkeley (go Bears!) will be leading a FREE, ONLINE five week class teaching Software Engineering As A Service. They will cover Agile methodologies and best-in-class tools, including how to deploy on Heroku, and using tools such as Pivotal… Continue reading

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Schema Builder, Layouts and Field Level Security

Thanks to the updated Developer Console and Schema Builder’s new ability to manipulate the data structure directly, I’ve been spending a lot more time in my browser to build out applications.  There is one way Schema Builder currently behaves, however, that developers should be aware of when creating new objects and fields.

Currently the builder behaves in the same way that creating metadata via the Metadata API (the API currently used in the Force.com IDE) works – it doesn’t, by default, create and field level security settings.  The result is that, even as System Administrator you don’t see your… Continue reading

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