Dynamically access any variable in an instance class

In this blog post, I will show you how to access any variable on an instance of an Apex class dynamically.

This is something useful when you want to make dynamic feature which are based on setting, especialy when doing ISV stuffs.

The code is as simple as below:

public class Employee {
    public String employeeId;
    public String firstname;
    public String lastname;
    public String username;
    public String profileUrl;

    public Object getValue(String variableName) {
        String jsonString = toJSON();
        Map<String, Object> untyped_instance;
        untyped_instance = 
            (Map<String, Object>)JSON.deserializeUntyped(jsonString);
        return untyped_instance.get(variableName);
    }
    
    public string toJSON() {
        return JSON.serialize(this);
    }
}

Example:

Employee emp = new Employee();
emp.employeeId = 'test';
emp.firstname = 'kevan';
emp.lastname = 'moothien';
emp.username = 'kevanmoothien';
emp.profileUrl = 'https://picsum.photos/200/300';

system.debug(emp.getValue('firstname')); // returns kevan

system.debug(emp.getValue('lastname')); // returns moothien

Here is a use case where this kind of integration can be used based on the above code.
Suppose you have to develop a custom related list lightning component which would be used on several layout. But on each layout, it has to display different columns.

To achieve this, we would think of different component and hardcoded variable. But, this can be done by simply having a Custom Metadata type to save the setting of each layout and the related list custom component can simply display the columns value dynamically using the above code based on the setting provided in the Lighting app builder.

Hope this is useful to you trailblazers.

Cheers :)

Nice css spinner for Visualforce pages

Did it ever happen that you have design a nice looking Visualforce page and had to insert a loading icon but didn't want to use the one provided by Salesforce (see image below)?

Well it happened to me a lot of time that I needed to find a reusable piece of code for a loading/spinner icon. Doing some research I found a that this guy, Tobias Ahlin, has come up with a SpinKit (https://github.com/tobiasahlin/SpinKit). So I decided to make a reusable component for having different kind of spinner with customize colors.

It is pretty easy to use, just need to copy the component on your Salesforce environment and execute some JavaScript whenever you want to toggle on and off the spinner/loading.

Source code can be found here: https://github.com/kevanmoothien/sfdc-spinner



The result should look something like that:

A live demo of all the spinners is available at: http://tobiasahlin.com/spinkit/

Hope you like this tutorial.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve this component, I will be glad to hear them.

Cheers!!

Installation

Click on the link below and add the codes in a visualforce component name "spinner" or any other name that sound best for you

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kevanmoothien/sfdc-spinner/master/src/components/spinner.component

Basic usage

Include the Visualforce component on the Visualforce page you want to use the spinner/loading like in the code below.

<apex:page>
  <c:spinner />
</apex:page>

Displaying the spinner

To display the spinner, a JavaScript code must be executed. Here are the code

km_spin(true); // to show the spinner
km_spin(false); // to hide the spinner

Advanced usage

Customizing the spinner

You can further customize the Spinner by adding some attributes such as in the code below:

<apex:page>
    <c:spinner spinner_name="wave"  spinner_color="red" />
</apex:page>

Possible value for "spinner_name" are:

• rotating-plane
• wave
• wandering-cubes
• spinner-pulse
• double-bounce
• chasing-dots
• three-bounce
• circle
• cube-grid
• fading-circle
• folding-cube

Value for "spinner_color" is a hex or html color name

Does a Lightning Component know if it is in a Community or a standard Lightning Salesforce page?

I have a component that implements both the interface for Community and Standard Lightning.

Some people suggest to add an attribute and set it in the Lightning App Builder or Community Builder so as to distinguish in which kind of environment we are.

It is quite annoying for the System Administrator to configure the behavior of the component each time it is needed.

But what if this can be achieved automatically by only a few lines of code?

Here is how I did it:

Your component must first extends a controller.

I Hope that this post will be helpful to you. Cheers!!

Lightning component .cmp aura:component implements="force:hasRecordId, force:appHostable, flexipage:availableForAllPageTypes, forceCommunity:availableForAllPageTypes" controller="CustomController"> aura:handler name="init" value="{!this}" action="{!c.init}"/> /aura:component Apex controller .cls public with sharing class CustomController { @AuraEnabled public static boolean isCommunity(){ Id siteId = Site.getSiteId(); if (siteId != null) { return true; } return false; } } Lightning component controller .js ({ init : function(component, event, helper) { var action = component.get("c.isCommunity"); action.setCallback(this, function(response) { var isCommunity = response.getReturnValue(); // do any operation needed here }); $A.enqueueAction(action); } })