SalesForce.Com Issues/Gotchas aka. Bugs/Defects (again !!!)

Yet another undocumented SalesForce Bug has been found !!!

This bring my personal count to 4 and climbing…

It is rather odd these kinds of defects can exist in such a prestigious framework as SalesForce/VisualForce/Apex with so many people using it when other web-based Frameworks (Django and others) do NOT exhibit such behaviors.

I have revised #2 and #3 while adding some additional issues since my last post:  (This is where experience counts… since I know what is expected when unexpected things begin to happen…)

SalesForce.Com Issues/Gotchas aka. Bugs/Defects (Redux)

  1. Cannot reference null values for <apex:outputText/> or <apex:inputText/>.
  2. Cannot reference non-String objects with <apex:outputText/> or <apex:inputText/>.
  1. Under some circumstances VisualForce will allow String objects to be referenced by <apex:outputText/> or <apex:inputText/> tags however after a certain threshold has been reached the Force IDE will begin to complain about what it calls SObject references after which the only acceptable correction is to reference the result from a SOQL query – this can clash with #2 for some obvious reasons.
  2. VisualForce/Apex cannot handle instance variables that contain “_” underscores in variable names nor can Custom Field names be used from SOQL Queries in this manner.
  • Cannot retrieve the Parameters from ApexPages.currentPage() more than exactly once because the associated [Parameters] information is lost for subsequent invocations.
  • Cannot pass back the ApexPages.currentPage() when expecting the user to make a correction in the <apex:inputText/> because the VisualForce page will remember the values from the Parameters thus ignoring user inputs for subsequent form posts.
  • SalesForce.Com Issues/Gotchas aka. Bugs/Defects (Redux)

    Yet another undocumented SalesForce Bug has been found !!!

    This bring my personal count to 4 and climbing…

    It is rather odd these kinds of defects can exist in such a prestigious framework as SalesForce/VisualForce/Apex with so many people using it when other web-based Frameworks (Django and others) do NOT exhibit such behaviors.

    I have revised #2 and #3 while adding some additional issues since my last post:  (This is where experience counts… since I know what is expected when unexpected things begin to happen…)

    SalesForce.Com Issues/Gotchas aka. Bugs/Defects

    1). Cannot reference null values for <apex:outputText/> or <apex:inputText/>.
    2). Cannot reference non-String objects with <apex:outputText/> or <apex:inputText/>.
    2a). Under some circumstances VisualForce will allow String objects to be referenced by <apex:outputText/> or <apex:inputText/> tags however after a certain threshold has been reached the Force IDE will begin to complain about what it calls SObject references after which the only acceptable correction is to reference the result from a SOQL query – this can clash with #2 for some obvious reasons.
    3). Cannot retrieve the Parameters from ApexPages.currentPage() more than exactly once because the associated [Parameters] information is lost for subsequent invocations.
    4). Cannot pass back the ApexPages.currentPage() when expecting the user to make a correction in the <apex:inputText/> because the VisualForce page will remember the values from the Parameters thus ignoring user inputs for subsequent form posts.

    Programming Test sponsored by NASA and RackSpace *yawn*

    Programming Tests that have no bearing on the reality of software engineering are a real hoot – this one comes to us from NASA and RackSpace – I especially liked the one from my early childhood – the one that counts coins… LOL

    Enjoy !!!

    dev project 3 – Voccio

    dev project 3 – Voccio (response on 11-17-2011)

    SalesForce.Com Issues/Gotchas aka. Bugs/Defects

    SalesForce.Com Issues/Gotchas aka. Bugs/Defects

    These are aspects of SalesForce/Apex [current version in-use as of the date of this post] that don’t actually conform to the general way one might expect this platform to behave.

    The really cool thing is that none of these issues/gotchas/defects/bugs result in a lack of expected behavior without error/warning or comment.

    • Cannot reference null values for <apex:outputText/> or <apex:inputText/>.
    • This is to say whenever a null value is retrieved from a SOQL statement that value will cause the desired <apex:outputText/> or <apex:inputText/>.
    • It seems the code responsible for rendering the <apex:outputText/> or <apex:inputText/> cannot function whenever the value being displayed is null – this is NOT the expected behavior since one can just as easily deal with rendering a null value by casting a null to String using the following code fragment: ”   ”+value_containing_null+”   “.
  • Cannot reference Datetime objects with <apex:outputText/> or <apex:inputText/>.
    • This is to say the the only valid data type for Input/Output operations is a non-null String value, all other values will result in a lack of desired functionality.
    • It seems the code responsible for rendering a non-String value cannot deal with a type cast to String – this is not such a huge problem as one might think since most OOP programming languages provide a method for rending any type to String however for some unexpected reason this is not the case with Apex.
  • Cannot retrieve the ApexPages.currentPage() more than exactly once because the associated information is lost for subsequent invocations.
    • This is to say the ApexPages.currentPage() can only retrieve valid values for ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters() exactly once and never again; subsequent invocations will NOT provide the same values for ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters() that were provided in the initial invocation.
    • This is a most curious defect because ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters() does nothing more than retrieve the POST/GET variables from the Request however this is NOT the case with Apex.

    So you want to build a slick Video Chat Service of your own based on Python, RTMP and Flash

    Here’s the Research you might want to focus on:

    So I got all twisted 4 long years ago…

    This is how twisted I was 4 long years ago…  it never occurred to me anyone might have thought the twisted framework was anything but super easy to use ;-)

    Enjoy the download…  twisted-11-19-2007 (believe it or not… this code comes right out of 11-19-2007… Disclaimer: Some of this code may be from Open Source sources… nothing like stating the obvious…)

    See also:

    What is the Twisted Framework ?!?

    What is the Twisted Framework ?!?

    Every so often I am asked to describe certain frameworks like the Twisted Framework and this is my response for that one.

    The Twisted Framework (Disclaimer: Some of the code in this document was written by Ray C Horn but the rest was not since it may be from some Open Source sources… nothing like stating the obvious…)

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