Visualforce Developer Guide

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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
Override Buttons, Links, and Tabs with Visualforce
Using Static Resources
Creating and Using Custom Components
Dynamic Visualforce Bindings
Dynamic Visualforce Components
Dynamic Components Restrictions
Creating and Displaying Dynamic Components
Deferred Creation of Dynamic Components
Example Using a Related List
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

Dynamic Visualforce Components

Visualforce is primarily intended to be a static, markup-driven language that lets developers create a user interface that matches the Salesforce look-and-feel. However, there are occasions when it’s necessary to programmatically create a page. Usually, this is to achieve complicated user interface behavior that’s difficult or impossible with standard markup.

Dynamic Visualforce components offer a way to create Visualforce pages that vary the content or arrangement of the component tree according to a variety of states, such as a user’s permissions or actions, user or organization preferences, the data being displayed, and so on. Rather than using standard markup, dynamic Visualforce components are designed in Apex.

A dynamic Visualforce component is defined in Apex like this:
Component.Component_namespace.Component_name
For example, <apex:dataTable> becomes Component.Apex.DataTable.

The Standard Visualforce Component Reference contains the dynamic representation for all valid Visualforce components.

Note

Visualforce components that are dynamically represented in Apex behave like regular classes. Every attribute that exists on a standard Visualforce component is available as a property in the corresponding Apex representation with get and set methods. For example, you could manipulate the value attribute on an <apex:outputText> component as follows:
Component.Apex.OutputText outText = new Component.Apex.OutputText();
outText.value = 'Some dynamic output text.';
Consider using dynamic Visualforce components in the following scenarios:
  • You can use dynamic Visualforce components inside complex control logic to assemble components in combinations that would be challenging or impossible to create using equivalent standard Visualforce. For example, with standard Visualforce components, you typically control the visibility of components using the rendered attribute with the global IF() formula function. By writing your control logic in Apex, you can choose to display components dynamically with a more natural mechanism.
  • If you know that you’ll be iterating over objects with certain fields, but not specifically which objects, dynamic Visualforce components can “plug in” the object representation by using a generic sObject reference. For more information, see Example Using a Related List.

Dynamic Visualforce components are not intended to be the primary way to create new Visualforce pages in your organization. Existing Visualforce pages shouldn’t be rewritten in a dynamic manner and, for most use cases, standard Visualforce components are acceptable and preferred. You should only use dynamic Visualforce components when the page must adapt itself to user state or actions in ways that can’t be elegantly coded into static markup.

Warning