Reporting in Salesforce

Oh how I loathe thee… so damn limited, I’m tempted just to build a secondary database to run a freakin’ SQL query. Real SQL not the SOQL stuff that can’t even do joins.

Give me the ability to aggregate on my terms

Give me the ability to specify joins on my terms

Give me the ability to specify OUTER joins on my terms

 

Oh how I loathe thee…. so damn limiting.

Salesforce.com APEX – new record trigger

Bouncing around a little bit now, I’ve found myself on a Salesforce.com project (dare I say “trapped”?). Anyway, I did have some fun coding with the Force.com IDE.

In this scenario, I had to write my very first trigger. The requirement was to create a case upon the creation of a new record. My code ended up looking like this for the trigger.

trigger createCaseFromBroker on BrokerShop__c (after insert) {

    List<Group> sfdcGroup = [select Id, name from Group where Name = 'Support Queue' limit 1];

        if(Trigger.new.size() == 1){
        for(BrokerShop__c b:Trigger.new){
          //for each broker, b, create a new DueDiligence case
              Case newCase = new Case(
                Subject = 'Perform Due Diligence',
                Broker_Shop__c = b.Id,
                Status = 'Open',
                Priority = 'Medium',
                Category__c = 'Pre-Approval',
                Subcategory__c = 'How to become a Broker',
                Origin = 'Web'  //is there an origin? required in UI
              );

              //if broker has a primary contact
              if(b.Primary_Contact__c != null){
                  newCase.ContactId = b.Primary_Contact__c;
              }
              if(!sfdcGroup.isEmpty()){
                  newCase.OwnerId = sfdcGroup[0].Id;
              }
              insert newCase;
        }
        }
}

A couple of notes on this:

• This is the main trigger set to fire ‘after insert’
• The trigger is based on a custom SFDC object

On to the unit testing. I will give credit to Salesforce on this one. Requiring unit tests with a minimum coverage of 75% is commendable. Annoying for those of us that just hack our way (me), but still commendable. On to the tests. I encapsulated all of the test cases into my own class file.

public class CreateCase {

  static testMethod void test_createCaseFromBroker(){

      //create contact record
      Contact contact = new Contact();
      contact.FirstName = 'Test 1 - contact';
      contact.LastName = 'Dummy';
      insert contact;
      String contactId = contact.Id;

    //create broker record #1
    BrokerShop__c broker1 = new BrokerShop__c();
    broker1.Name = 'Test 1 - broker';
    broker1.Street_Address__c = '123 Test St';
    broker1.City__c = 'Test';
    broker1.State__c = 'California';
    broker1.Zip__c = '00000';
    broker1.Primary_Contact__c = contactId;

    insert broker1;
    String broker1Id = broker1.Id;

    //validate case was created
    List<Case> bsCase = [
        SELECT Id,Broker_Shop__c
            FROM case
            WHERE Broker_Shop__c = :broker1Id
            LIMIT 1
        ];
    for( Case c:bsCase ){
        System.assertEquals(broker1Id,c.Broker_Shop__c);
    }

  }

}

So there you have it. A insert trigger within Salesforce to create a related case record.