Creating tables in Visualforce is easy. Provide a list of Objects to display and define various columns that access different items in each Object. Easy. Things become tricky when one needs to display data from more than one object in a table. To solve this problem one need only define a dummy class to hold all the relevant data. This article will detail such a process.
Let us begin by inspecting the syntax of a simple Visualforce page that displays a table:
<apex:page controller="TrainingController ">
<apex:pageBlock title="Users">
<apex:pageBlockTable value="{!Users}" var="item">
<apex:column value=”item.Name”/>
</apex:pageBlockTable>
</apex:pageBlock>
</apex:page>
public class TrainingController
{
public User[] getUsers()
{
return [select Name, Id from User];
}
}
The above code will print out all the names for users returned by getUsers() in a shiny new table. This is easy to do without any special technique.
Consider a slightly more complex situation. You are building a Learning Management System that associates Users with Transcripts and TrainingPaths. You create a Transcript and TrainingPath custom object that each have a reference to a User defined as Trainee__c. Now you want to display each trainee in a table with the associated TrainingPath name and Transcript percentComplete field. But, how can we display three different objects within the same table? This is the question answered through the creation and use of dummy objects.
An incorrect approach to solving this issue is to create apex methods that query the objects and then call these from individual columns. Unfortunately, life is not that easy as this solution is not scalable because the number of queries would be proportional to the number of entries in the table. As soon as the table grows the governor limits will be met and your page will fail to load.
A working solution is the creation of apex dummy classes. The idea of dummy classes is that we create an apex class with the sole purpose of providing access to more than one object. Check out the dummy class below:
public class TrainingPathDummy
{
public Training_Path__c tp { get; set; }
public Transcript__c transcript { get; set; }
public User trainee { get; set; }
public TrainingPathDummy(Training_Path__c tp1, Transcript__c trans1, User trainee1 )
{
tp = tp1;
transcript = trans1;
trainee = trainee1;
}
}
This dummy class has a member variable for each of the data objects we want to display in our table. Notice that the constructor has a parameter for each of the class variables. These will be passed in from the controller so that no queries within the dummy class. A list of these TrainingPathDummy classes can be iterated over in the pageBlockTable and its member objects can be accessed in the table easily as seen below:
<apex:page controller="TrainingController ">
<apex:pageBlock title="Users">
<apex:pageBlockTable value="{!TrainingPathDummys}" var="dummy">
<apex:column value=”dummy.trainee.Name”/>
<apex:column value=”dummy.tp.Name”/>
<apex:column value=”dummy.transcript.PercentComplete__c”/>
</apex:pageBlockTable>
</apex:pageBlock>
</apex:page>
The Controller class must do all the heavy lifting of querying the data and forming it into dummy classes. Populating the list of dummy classes only takes 3 queries regardless of the size of the table. Governor safe and mother approved!
public class TrainingController
{
public User[] getUsers()
{
return [select Name, Id from User];
}
public Transcript__c[] getTranscripts()
{
return [select Name, Id, PercentComplete__c from Transcript__c];
}
public TrainingPath__c[] getTrainingPaths()
{
return [select Name, Id from TrainingPath__c];
}
public TrainingPathDummy[] getTrainingPathDummys()
{
TrainingPathDummy[] result = new TrainingPathDummy[]();
//query for all the data
User[] allUsers = getUsers();
Transcript__c allTranscripts = getTranscripts();
TrainingPath__c allTPs = getTrainingPaths();
//find all the related data and put into dummy class
for(User u: allUsers)
{
//get the related Transcript
Transcript__c curTrans;
for(Transcript__c trans: allTranscripts)
{
if(trans.Trainee__c == u.id)
{
curTrans = trans;
break;
}
}
//get the related TrainingPath
TrainingPath__c curTrainingPath;
for(TrainingPath__c tp: allTPs)
{
if(tp.Trainee__c == u.id)
{
curTrainingPath = tp;
break;
}
}
//create the Dummy class and add to the result list
result.add(new TrainingPathDummy(u, curTrainingPath, curTrans);
}
return result;
}
Using Dummy classes is a useful skill for displaying data logically while keeping the total number of queries low. Add this method to your developer toolbox today!
