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
What are Custom Controllers and Controller Extensions?
Build a Custom Controller
Building a Controller Extension
Building a Custom List Controller
Controller Methods
Controller Class Security
Working with Large Sets of Data
Considerations for Creating Custom Controllers and Controller Extensions
Order of Execution in a Visualforce Page
Test a Custom Controller
Validation Rules and Custom Controllers
Using the transient Keyword
Advanced Examples
Override Buttons, Links, and Tabs with Visualforce
Using Static Resources
Creating and Using Custom Components
Dynamic Visualforce Bindings
Dynamic Visualforce Components
Integrate 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
Visualforce Best Practices
Standard Visualforce Component Reference
Appendices
PDF

Building a Custom List Controller

A custom list controller is similar to a standard list controller. Custom list controllers can implement Apex logic that you define to show or act on a set of records.

For example you can create the following custom list controller based on a SOQL query:

The list of sObjects returned by getRecords() is immutable. For example, you can’t call clear() on it. You can make changes to the sObjects contained in the list, but you can’t add items to or remove items from the list itself.

Note

The following Visualforce markup shows how the custom controller above can be used in a page:
You can also create a custom list controller that uses anti- and semi-joins as part of the SOQL query. The following code is implemented as an extension to the account standard controller:
The page that displays these records uses a mix of standard list controller actions, but depends on iterating over the records returned from the custom list controller: