Lightning Aura Components Developer Guide

What Is the Lightning Component Framework?
Quick Start
Creating Components
Using Components
Communicating with Events
Communicating Across the DOM with Lightning Message Service
Creating Apps
Styling Apps
Developing Secure Code
Using JavaScript
Working with Salesforce Data
Lightning Data Service
Using Apex
Creating Server-Side Logic with Controllers
Apex Server-Side Controller Overview
AuraEnabled Annotation
Creating an Apex Server-Side Controller
Using Apex to Work with Salesforce Records
Granting User Access for Apex Classes
Securing Data in Apex Controllers
Calling a Server-Side Action
Passing Data to an Apex Controller
Returning Data from an Apex Server-Side Controller
Returning Errors from an Apex Server-Side Controller
Queueing of Server-Side Actions
Foreground and Background Actions
Storable Actions
Abortable Actions
Testing Your Apex Code
Making API Calls from Apex
Make Long-Running Callouts with Continuations
Creating Components in Apex
Testing Components with Lightning Testing Service
Debugging
Performance
Reference
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Returning Data from an Apex Server-Side Controller

Return results from a server-side controller to a client-side controller using the return statement. Results data must be serializable into JSON format.
Return data types can be any of the following.
  • Simple—String, Integer, and so on. See Basic Types for details.
  • sObject—standard and custom sObjects are both supported. See Standard and Custom Object Types.
  • Apex—an instance of an Apex class. (Most often a custom class.) See Custom Apex Class Types. You can’t use an Apex inner class as a return value for an Apex method that's called by an Aura component.
  • Collection—a collection of any of the other types. See Collection Types.

Returning Apex Objects

Here’s an example of a controller that returns a collection of custom Apex objects.

When an instance of an Apex class is returned from a server-side action, the instance is serialized to JSON by the framework. Only the values of public instance properties and methods annotated with @AuraEnabled are serialized and returned.

For example, here’s a simple “wrapper” Apex class that contains a few details for an account record. This class is used to package a few details of an account record in a serializable format.
When returned from a remote Apex controller action, the Id and Name properties are defined on the client-side. However, because it doesn’t have the @AuraEnabled annotation, the Phone property isn’t serialized on the server side, and isn’t returned as part of the result data.