Visualforce Developer Guide

Introducing Visualforce
What is Visualforce?
Which Editions Support Visualforce?
Which Permissions are Required for Visualforce Development?
How is Visualforce Architected?
What are the Benefits of Visualforce?
When Should I Use Visualforce?
When Should I Use Lightning Web Components Instead of Visualforce?
How Do Visualforce Pages Compare to S-Controls?
How is Visualforce Versioned?
What’s New in Visualforce Version 53.0
Documentation Typographical Conventions
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
Communicating Across the DOM with Lightning Message Service
Best Practices
Standard Component Reference
Appendices
Glossary
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Introducing Visualforce

Over the past several years, Salesforce has created a comprehensive platform for building on-demand applications. Like other sophisticated application development platforms, the Lightning platform offers separate tools for defining:
  • The structure of the data—that is, the data model
  • The rules that detail how that data can be manipulated—that is, the business logic
  • The layouts that specify how that data should be displayed—that is, the user interface

Splitting up application development tools based on whether they affect the data model, business logic, or user interface is also known as the Model-View-Controller (MVC) application development pattern—the Model is the data model, the View is the user interface, and the Controller is the business logic.

Note

While the tools for building the data model and business logic for applications are powerful solutions that run natively on Lightning platform servers, the existing tools for defining user interfaces have had certain limitations:
  • Page layouts, the point-and-click tool that allows application developers to organize fields, buttons, and related lists on record detail pages, do not provide much flexibility in how sets of information are displayed. Fields must always appear above related lists, buttons must always appear above fields, and s-controls and custom links can only be placed in particular areas.
  • S-controls, the tool that allows application developers to display custom HTML in a detail page or custom tab, provide more flexibility than page layouts, but:
    • Execute from within a browser, causing poor performance if displaying or updating values from more than a few records at a time
    • Do not provide an easy way to give custom user interface elements the same look-and-feel as standard Salesforce pages
    • Require developers to enforce field uniqueness and other metadata dependencies on their own

    Visualforce pages supersede s-controls. Organizations that haven’t previously used s-controls can’t create them. Existing s-controls are unaffected, and can still be edited.

    Important

For these reasons, Salesforce has introduced Visualforce, the next-generation solution for building sophisticated custom user interfaces on the Lightning platform.

Visualforce is available for desktop browsers and in the Salesforce mobile app. For desktop browsers, it is available in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic. Visualforce pages and custom iframes aren’t supported in Lightning Experience on iPad Safari.