This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Introducing the Force.com IDE
The Force.com IDE is an extension to the standard Eclipse development tool for building, managing, and deploying projects on the Force.com platform. This section covers installation and gives a brief walk-through of the Force.com IDE components used throughout this book.
Installation
The Force.com IDE is distributed in two forms: a stand-alone application and a plug-in to the Eclipse IDE. If Force.com is your primary development language or you are not an existing Eclipse IDE user, the stand-alone version is a good choice. The plug-in version of the Force.com IDE requires Eclipse, which you can find at www.eclipse.org. Only specific versions of Eclipse are supported by the Force.com IDE. If you are already using Eclipse but it’s an unsupported version, keep your existing Eclipse version and install the supported version just for use with the Force.com IDE. Multiple versions of Eclipse can coexist peacefully on a single computer.
Visit http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Apex_Toolkit_for_Eclipse to learn how to install the stand-alone and plug-in versions of the Force.com IDE.
Force.com Perspective
A perspective is a concept used by Eclipse to describe a collection of user interface components. For example, Eclipse has built-in perspectives called Java and Java Debug. By installing the Force.com IDE, you’ve added a perspective called Force.com. Figure 4.1 shows the Force.com perspective, indicated in the upper-right corner.
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Figure 4.1 Force.com perspective
If you do not see the Force.com perspective, click the menu option Window, Open Perspective, Other; select Force.com from the Open Perspective dialog; and click the OK button. The Open Perspective dialog is shown in Figure 4.2.
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Figure 4.2 Open Perspective dialog
The Force.com perspective includes several user interface panels, called Views. You can see two of them at the bottom of Figure 4.1: Execute Anonymous and Apex Test Runner. It also adds a new type of project called the Force.com Project, which is shown in the left-side Navigator tab. The first step to using the Force.com IDE is to create a Force.com Project.
Force.com Projects
A Force.com Project allows you to read and write code, user interfaces, and other metadata objects within a Force.com organization from your local computer. Although this metadata is edited locally, it must be deployed to the Force.com service to run. Deployment to Force.com occurs automatically every time you make a modification to an object in a Force.com Project and save the changes. The contents of a Force.com Project are visible in the Navigator or Package Explorer Views.
Problems View
The Force.com IDE leverages the standard Eclipse View called Problems to display compilation errors. When you save changes to an object in a Force.com Project, it is sent over the network to the Force.com service for compilation. If compilation fails, Force.com-specific errors are added to the Problems View. In most cases, you can double-click a problem row to navigate to the offending line of code.
Schema Explorer
The Schema Explorer allows direct interaction with the Force.com database. Use it to inspect objects and fields and to execute database queries and preview their results. To open the Schema Explorer, double-click the object named salesforce.schema in any Force.com Project. In Figure 4.3, the Schema Explorer is open and displaying the fields in the Project object in its right panel. In its left panel, a query has been executed and has returned a list of Contact records.
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Figure 4.3 Force.com IDE Schema Explorer
Apex Test Runner View
All business logic written in Force.com must be accompanied by unit tests to deploy it to a production environment. Apex Test Runner View is a user interface to run unit tests and view test results, including statistics on code performance and test coverage. If the Apex Test Runner is not already visible on the bottom of your screen, go to the Window menu and select Show View, Apex Test Runner.
Execute Anonymous View
The Execute Anonymous View provides an interactive, immediate way to execute arbitrary blocks of Apex code. Unless noted otherwise, you can execute all the code snippets in this chapter directly from the Force.com IDE using the Execute Anonymous View.
To try the Execute Anonymous View, first create a new Force.com Project. Go to the File menu and select File, New Force.com Project. Enter a project name; enter your Force.com username, password, and security token; and click the Next button. If you receive an error on this step, double-check your username, password, and security token. Also make sure you’re providing the credentials for a Developer Edition organization, given that other types of organizations might not have access to the Force.com API. Select the metadata components Apex and Visualforce; then click the Finish button to create the project.
After you’ve created a project for your Development Edition organization, the Execute Anonymous View should be visible in the lower-right half of the screen. If not, go to the Window menu and select Show View, Execute Anonymous. In the Source to Execute text box, enter the code given in Listing 4.1. If the text box is not visible, resize your Execute Anonymous View until it’s tall enough to see it. If the text box is disabled, double-click the Execute Anonymous tab to maximize and enable it. After you’ve entered the code, click the Execute Anonymous button to run it.
Listing 4.1 Hello World
String helloWorld(String name) {
return 'Hello, ' + name;
}
System.debug(helloWorld('Apex'));
This sample code defines a function called helloWorld that accepts a single String parameter. It then invokes it with the name Apex and displays the results, Hello Apex, to the debug log.