Visualforce Developer Guide

Introducing Visualforce
Tools for Visualforce Development
Getting a Quick Start with Visualforce
Customizing the Appearance and Output of Visualforce Pages
Standard Controllers
Standard List Controllers
Custom Controllers and Controller Extensions
Advanced Examples
Creating Your First Custom Controller
Creating a Wizard
Advanced Visualforce Dashboard Components
Integrating Visualforce and Google Charts
Mass-Updating Records with a Custom List Controller
Overriding Buttons, Links, and Tabs with Visualforce
Using Static Resources
Creating and Using Custom Components
Dynamic Visualforce Bindings
Dynamic Visualforce Components
Integrating Email with Visualforce
Visualforce Charting
Creating Maps with Visualforce
Render Flows with Visualforce
Templating with Visualforce
Developing Salesforce Apps with Visualforce
Adding Visualforce to a Salesforce AppExchange App
Using JavaScript in Visualforce Pages
Best Practices
Standard Component Reference
Appendices
Glossary
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Creating a Wizard

Having learned about the essential features of Visualforce markup and controllers, this final example shows how they can be used together to create a custom, three-step wizard that allows users to create an opportunity at the same time as a related contact, account, and contact role:
  • The first step captures information related to the account and contact
  • The second step captures information related to the opportunity
  • The final step shows which records will be created and allows the user to save or cancel
To implement this wizard, we must define three pages for each of the three steps in the wizard, plus a single custom controller that sets up navigation between each of the pages and tracks the data that the user enters.

Data that's used across several Visualforce pages must be defined within the first page, even if that page isn't using the data. For example, if a field is necessary on pages two and three of a three-step process, page one must also contain the field. You can hide this field from the user by setting the rendered attribute of the field to false.

Important

The code for each of these components is included in the sections below, but first you need to understand the best procedure for creating them because each of the three pages references the controller, and the controller references each of the three pages. In what appears to be a conundrum, you cannot create the controller without the pages, but the pages have to exist to refer to them in the controller.

We can work out of this problem by first defining pages that are completely empty, then creating the controller, and then adding markup to the pages. Consequently, the best procedure for creating the wizard pages and controller is as follows:
  1. Navigate to the URL for the first page, https://Salesforce_instance/apex/opptyStep1, and click Create Page opptyStep1.
  2. Repeat the step above for the other pages in the wizard, opptyStep2 and opptyStep3.
  3. Create the newOpportunityController controller by adding it as an attribute to the <apex:page> tag on one of your pages (for example, <apex:page controller="newOpportunityController">, and clicking Create Apex controller newOpportunityController. Paste in all of the controller code and click Save.
  4. Now return to the editors for the three pages that you created and copy in their code. The wizard should now work as expected.

Although you can create an empty page, the reverse is not true—in order for a page to refer to a controller, the controller has to exist with all of its methods and properties.

Note

The Opportunity Wizard Controller

The following Apex class is the controller for all three pages in the New Customer Opportunity wizard:

Step One of the Opportunity Wizard

The following code defines the first page of the wizard (opptyStep1) in which data about the associated contact and account is gathered from the user:

Notice the following about the markup for the first page of the wizard:
  • The <apex:pageBlock> tag can take an optional <apex:pageBlockButtons> child element that controls the buttons that appear in the header and footer of the component. The order in which the <apex:pageBlockButtons> tag appears in the <apex:pageBlock> body does not matter. In this page of the wizard, the <apex:pageBlockButtons> tag includes the Next button that appears in the footer of the page block area.
  • The wizard relies on JavaScript code to display a dialog box asking if a user wants to navigate away when clicking the Cancel button. Although the example includes the JavaScript directly in the markup for simplicity, it is a better practice to put JavaScript code in a static resource and reference that resource instead.
  • In this page of the wizard, the Next button calls the step2 method in the controller, which returns a PageReference to the next step of the wizard:

    Command buttons must appear in a form, because the form component itself is responsible for refreshing the page display based on the new PageReference.

  • An <apex:pageBlockSection> tag organizes a set of data for display. Similar to a table, an <apex:pageBlockSection> consists of one or more columns, each of which spans two cells—one for a field's label, and one for its value. Each component found in the body of an <apex:pageBlockSection> tag is placed into the next cell in a row until the number of columns is reached. At that point, the next component wraps to the next row and is placed in the first cell.

    Some components, including <apex:inputField>, automatically span both cells of a page block section column at once, filling in both a field's label and value. For example, in the Contact Information area of this page, the First Name field is in the first column, the Last Name field is in the second column, and the Phone field wraps to the first column of the next row:

  • The value attribute on the first <apex:inputField> tag in the preceding code excerpt assigns the user's input to the firstName field of the contact record that's returned by the getContact method in the controller.
Your page should look like this:
Step 1 of the New Customer Opportunity Wizard Step 1 of the New Customer Opportunity wizard. Two sections, called "Account Information" and "Contact Information", are displayed.

Step Two of the Opportunity Wizard

The following code defines the second page of the wizard (opptyStep2) in which data about the opportunity is gathered from the user:

Notice that although the markup for placing the Close Date, Stage, and Role for Contact fields on the form is the same as the other fields, the <apex:inputField> tag examines the data type of each field to determine how to display it. For example, clicking in the Close Date text box brings up a calendar from which users can select the date.

Your page should look like this:
Step 2 of the New Customer Opportunity Wizard Step 2 of the New Customer Opportunity wizard. A section called "Opportunity Information" is displayed.

Step Three of the Opportunity Wizard

The last block of code defines the third page of the wizard (opptyStep3) in which all inputted data is displayed. The user can decide to save the operation or return to the previous step:

Notice that the third page of the wizard simply writes text to the page with <apex:outputField> tags.

Your final page should look like this:
Step 3 of the New Customer Opportunity Wizard Step 3 of the New Customer Opportunity wizard. The filled-out sections "Account Information," "Contact Information," and "Opportunity Information" are displayed for review.