A round up of the state of Javascript on Force.com now that remote objects are about to go GA on Force.com in Winter 15. There are now four great options for invoking Javascript on your Visualforce page. Learn what they are, and more importantly why you need all of them, and when to use each one. Delivered at Salesforce Developer Group North on 18 September, 2014.

1. A Miscellany of Things
Force.com
Peter Chittum
@pchittum
github.com/pchittum
slideshare.com/chittum

2. Safe Harbor
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3. What’s On?
 Javascript on Visualforce
 Remote Objects
 RevealJS

4. JS Options for Visualforce
 Tag: apex:actionFunction
 API Calls
 @RemoteAction Apex Methods
 Remote Object

5. The Old Way
 actionFunction Pros
– Easy and Declarative
 API Pros
– Use of idiomatic JS
– No ViewState Overhead
– Higher data size limits
– Simple REST access via
ForceTK
 actionFunction Cons
– ViewState and VF
Postback overhead
 API Cons
– Burning API limit usage

6. The Newer Way
 @RemoteAction Apex Method
– Stateless
– More idiomatic (uses callback)
– Simplified on client side with RemoteTK library

7. The New Way
 Remote Object
– Like Standard Controller and Remote methods got together and
had a baby
– Declared via markup
– No Apex, no required tests, just Javascript code
– Support for basic CRUD operations

8. The Three Musketeers
 Remote Object
– First choice for basic CRUD
 @RemoteAction Apex Method
– Move complexity to server and transaction control
 API
– Larger data (binary files)

9. What’s On?
 Javascript on Visualforce
 Remote Objects
 RevealJS

10. More on Remote Object
 GA in Winter 15!
 CRUD: Create, Retrieve, Update, Upsert, Delete
 Optional page-specific JS namespace
 Maps long Salesforce field names to JS-friendly names

11. Remote Object: Declaration
<apex:remoteObjects >
<apex:remoteObjectModel name="pcprerel__Damage_Report__c”
fields="Id,Name" jsShorthand="DamageReport">
<apex:remoteObjectField name="pcprerel__Merchandise__c"
jsShorthand="merchId"/>
<apex:remoteObjectField name="pcprerel__Type__c"
jsShorthand="type"/>
...
</apex:remoteObjectModel>
</apex:remoteObjects>

12. Remote Object: Create JS Object
var dr = new SObjectModel.DamageReport({
"merchId" : "{!Merchandise__c.Id}",
"type" : "Accident",
"description" : $('#ta-description').val()
});

13. Remote Object: Invoke DML
dr.create(function(err, result, event){
//debug with event to find out transaction status
if (err) {
console.log(err);
//do stuff with err
} else {
//use result
$('#test-display').text('Damage Report Id: '+result[0] );
}
});

14. Demo

15. Other Features
 Overriding of CRUD calls
 Own set of limits (i.e. max 100 rows for retrieve)
 Use rendered VF attribute to block generation of JS

16. What’s On?
 Javascript on Visualforce
 Remote Objects
 RevealJS

17. RevealJS
 Javascript library
 Creating pure HTML presentations
 Opensource at https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js/
 Cloud hosted at http://slid.es

18. Demo
Watch this play list to see RevealJS on Force.com
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkZK3G49sP2xE-yzEMvVJhbHmGMMDOkLz

19. Thank You