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
Live Controller (Pilot)
Advanced Examples
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
Best Practices for Improving Visualforce Performance
Best Practices for Accessing Component IDs
Best Practices for Static Resources
Best Practices for Controllers and Controller Extensions
Best Practices for Using Component Facets
Best Practices for Page Block Components
Best Practices for Rendering PDF Files
Best Practices for <apex:panelbar>
Standard Component Reference
Appendices
Glossary
PDF

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Best Practices for Using Component Facets

A facet consists of content in an area of a Visualforce component that provides contextual information about the data that is presented in the component. For example, <apex:dataTable> supports facets for the header, footer, and caption of a table, while <apex:column> only supports facets for the header and footer of the column. The <apex:facet> component allows you to override the default facet on a Visualforce component with your own content. Facets only allow a single child within the start and close tags.

Not all components support facets. Those that do are listed in the Standard Component Reference.

Note

When defining an <apex:facet>, it is always used as the child of another Visualforce component. The name attribute on the facet determines which area of the parent component is overridden.

Example: Using Facets with <apex:dataTable>

The following markup shows how the <apex:dataTable> component can be modified with <apex:facet>:

For this page to display account data, the ID of a valid account record must be specified as a query parameter in the URL for the page. For example:

Note

The page displays as follows:
Extending <apex:dataTable> with a Facet An example of a facet

Using Facets with <apex:actionStatus>

Another component that can use a facet is <apex:actionStatus>. The <apex:actionStatus> component can be extended to display an indicator whenever a page is being refreshed. For example, you can define a progress wheel with the following markup:
The associated controller updates the counter:
The page displays as follows:
Extending <apex:actionStatus> with a Facet A refresh counter stating, "Watch this counter: 1"