How to use apex:actionFunction in a Salesforce Visualforce Page?

SCENARIO

While working on one of the requirements for a banking sector project for a customer based in San Diego, California there was a requirement to update selected record in Visual Force Page.

 

Clicking on Update button, we need to pass the updated values from inputs of Visualforce page to apex class so that is that DML operations can be performed.

 

SOLUTION

To fulfil the requirement, we have used <apex:actionFuntion> tag of Visualforce page. By using this tag, we can call apex controller method from java script code using an AJAX request.  

To set field values directly from VF page, we have used <apex:param> with <apex:actionFunction> and added this keyword in the assignedTo attribute of <apex:param>. 

 

Below is a sample code for reference. Here we are updating Account Name using <apex:actionFunction>.

1. On click of Update button, JS function will get the updated value of Account Name and pass it to the param of actionFunction. 
2. The actionFunction first sets the value of the variable and then invokes the method of apex class to update the account record. 

ActionFunction.vfp 

<apex:page controller="actionFunctionExampleController" sidebar="false" showHeader="false">
    <div style="margin : 20px;">
        
        <apex:form id="accountForm">
            <apex:actionFunction action="{!updateAccount}" name="updateAccountAF" reRender="dataTable">
                <apex:param name="accountName" assignTo="{!this.account.Name}" value="" />
            </apex:actionFunction>
            
            <apex:outputpanel >
                <label>Name :</label>
                <apex:inputField id="accountName" value="{!account.Name}"/>
                <apex:commandButton value="Update" onclick="GetAccountName(); return false;" />
            </apex:outputpanel>
        </apex:form>
        
        <div style="margin:20px 0px;">
            <apex:dataTable value="{!account}" var="acc" id="dataTable" border="1" width="50%">
                <apex:column value="{!acc.Name}" headerValue="Name"/>
                <apex:column value="{!acc.Type}" headerValue="Type"/>
                <apex:column value="{!acc.AccountNumber}" headerValue="Account Number"/>            
                <apex:column value="{!acc.Industry}" headerValue="Industry"/>
            </apex:dataTable>
        </div>
    </div>
    
    <script type="text/javascript">
        function GetAccountName(){
            var accountName = document.getElementById("{!$Component.accountForm.accountName}").value;        
            updateAccountAF(accountName);
        }
    </script>
    
</apex:page>

ActionFunctionController.apxc 

public class actionFunctionExampleController {
    
    public Account account {get;set;}
        
    public actionFunctionExampleController(){
        Id accountId  = ApexPages.CurrentPage().getparameters().get('id');
        account = [select id, Name, AccountNumber, Type, Industry from Account where id =: accountId ];
    }
    
    public void updateAccount(){
        update account;
    }
}

NOTE: 

Also, we can get the values of <apex:param> by using the below code in apex class. For that, we don't need to write assignedTo attribute in VF page. 

Apexpages.currentPage().getParameters.get(‘paramName’);

FACTS TO CONSIDER:

• An <apex:actionFunction> component must be a child of an <apex:form> component.
• Since the caller and <apex:actionFunction> are bound based on parameter order, make sure the caller's argument list matches the order of <apex:param>. 
• For API version 23 or later, you cannot use <apex:actionFunction> inside an iteration component like, <apex:pageBlockTable>, <apex:repeat>, and so on. 

 

OUTPUT

If you have any questions you can reach out our Salesforce Consulting team here.

Overview of Governor Limits in Salesforce

INTRODUCTION

Salesforce is a cloud computing service as a software (SaaS) company. It is specialized in customer relationship management (CRM). Salesforce provides a range of cloud solutions that allow businesses to connect with different types of data and deliver services to their customers in various ways.

Multitenancy is a fundamental technology that operates alongside cloud computing. Since Salesforce and Apex operate in a multitenant setting, the term "Salesforce Governor Limits" is used.

In order to ensure the practical use of the resources available on the Force.com platform, Salesforce has regulatory restrictions. Salesforce sets certain limitations in order to effectively use the code. 

What are Salesforce Governor Limits?

As we understand, Apex runs in a multi-tenant environment, meaning that all customers and organizations share a single resource. It is important to ensure that no one monopolizes the resources, which is why Salesforce.com has provided a series of restrictions that monitor and limit code execution. Salesforce sets limitations in order to effectively use the resources, and they are known as Governor limits in Salesforce.  

The governor can throw errors and suspend program execution if any of its limitations are exceeded. As a result, we must ensure that our code is flexible and does not surpass the Governor's limits. All these limits are applied on a per-transaction basis.

Types of Salesforce Governor Limits:

• Per-transaction Apex Limits  
• Per-transaction Certified Managed Package Limits 
• Size-specific Apex Limits 
• Static Apex Limits 
• Lightning Platform Apex Limits 
• Miscellaneous Apex Limits

Per-transaction Apex Limits

Per-transaction Apex Limits count for each Apex transaction. While we discuss Batch Apex, for every execution of a batch of records in the Execute method, these limits are reset. For the synchronous and asynchronous Apex, the following table lists the limits.

Description	Synchronous Limit	Asynchronous Limit
Total number of SOQL queries issued	100	200
Total number of records retrieved by SOQL queries	50,000
Total number of records retrieved by   Database.getQueryLocator	10,000
Total number of SOSL queries issued	20
Total number of records retrieved by a single SOSL query	2,000
Total number of DML statements issued	150
The total number of records processed as a result of DML statements, Approval Process, or database.emptyRecycleBin	10,000
Total stack depth for any Apex invocation that recursively fires triggers due to insert, update, or delete statements	16
Total number of callouts (HTTP requests or Web services calls) in a transaction	100
Maximum cumulative timeout for all callouts (HTTP requests or Web services calls) in a transaction	120 seconds
Maximum number of methods with the future annotation allowed per Apex invocation	50	0 in batch and future contexts; 1 in queueable context
Maximum number of Apex jobs added to the queue with System.enqueueJob	50	1
Total number of send email methods allowed	10
Total heap size	6 MB	12 MB
Maximum CPU time on the Salesforce servers	10,000 milliseconds	60,000 milliseconds
Maximum execution time for each Apex transaction	10 minutes
Maximum number of push notification method calls allowed per Apex transaction	10
Maximum number of push notifications that can be sent in each push notification method call	2,000
Maximum number of EventBus.publish calls for events configured to publish immediately	150

Per Transaction Certified Managed Package Limits

Certified Managed packaged are the managed packages that have passed the AppExchange security review. Salesforce ISV Partners develop certified managed packages that have specific namespaces and are installed in your org. They get their own set of limits for most limits per transaction. 

The number of certified namespaces that can be invoked in a single transaction does not have a limit. The precondition, however, is that the number of operations should be carried out in a separate namespace that should not reach the per-transaction limits.  

And there's a cap on the total number of operations that can be performed in a transaction through namespaces. The overall limit is 11 times the limit per namespace. 

This table summarizes Collective limits for cross-namespace.

Description	Collective Cross-Namespace Limit
Total number of SOQL queries issued	1,100
Total number of records retrieved by Database.getQueryLocator	110,000
Total number of SOSL queries issued	220
Total number of DML statements issued	1,650
Total number of callouts (HTTP requests or Web services calls) in a transaction	1,100
Total number of send email methods allowed	110

For certified managed packages, all per-transaction thresholds count individually, except for: 

• The maximum transaction execution time 
• The maximum number of unique namespaces  
• The maximum CPU time  
• The total heap size

Irrespective of how many certified managed packages are running in the same transaction, these caps count for the whole transaction. We have to understand that the script from an AppExchange package, not produced and not approved by a Salesforce ISV Partner, does not have its own separate governor limits. The overall org governor limits are counted against any services used by the package. Based on managed package namespaces, collective resource messages and alert emails are created as well. 

Size-specific Apex Limits

These limits related to the code. These size-dependent limitations are specifically intended to ensure that classes, causes, organs, etc. do not contain oversized items.

Description	Limit
Maximum number of characters for a class	1 million
Maximum number of characters for a trigger	1 million
The maximum amount of code used by all Apex code in an org	6 MB
Method size limit	65,535 bytecode instructions in compiled form

Static Apex Limits

There are also more additional Apex governor limits, i.e., along with various transactions, for various forms of callouts, queries, loops, records, and batch sizes. These Limits are applied across all transactions. 

Description	Limit
Default timeout of callouts (HTTP requests or Web services calls) in a transaction	10 seconds
Maximum size of callout request or response (HTTP request or Web services call)	6 MB for synchronous Apex or 12 MB for asynchronous Apex
Maximum SOQL query run time before Salesforce cancels the transaction	120 seconds
Maximum number of class and trigger code units in a deployment of Apex	5,000
Apex trigger batch size	200
For loop list batch size	200
Maximum number of records returned for a Batch Apex query in Database.QueryLocator	50 million

Lightning Platform Apex Limits

For apex transactions, the limits listed below are not valid, so the lightning platform manages these limits.

 

Description	Limit
The maximum number of asynchronous Apex method executions (batch Apex, future methods, Queueable Apex, and scheduled Apex) per a 24-hour period	250,000 or the number of user licenses in your org multiplied by 200, whichever is greater
Number of synchronous concurrent transactions for long-running transactions that last longer than 5 seconds for each org.	10
Maximum number of Apex classes scheduled concurrently	100. In Developer Edition orgs, the limit is 5.
Maximum number of batch Apex jobs in the Apex flex queue that are in Holding status	100
Maximum number of batch Apex jobs queued or active concurrently	5
Maximum number of batch Apex job start method concurrent executions	1
Maximum number of batch jobs that can be submitted in a running test	5
Maximum number of test classes that can be queued per 24-hour period (production orgs other than Developer Edition)	The greater of 500 or 10 multiplied by the number of test classes in the org
Maximum number of test classes that can be queued per 24-hour period (sandbox and Developer Edition orgs)	The greater of 500 or 20 multiplied by the number of test classes in the org
Maximum number of query cursors open concurrently per user	50
Maximum number of query cursors open concurrently per user for the Batch Apex start method	15
Maximum number of query cursors open concurrently per user for the Batch Apex execute and finish methods	5

Miscellaneous Apex Limits

Connect in Apex 

Each writing operation counts one DML statement against the governor limit for classes in the ConnectApi namespace. Calls to the ConnectApi method are also subject to rate limiting. A ConnectApi.RateLimitException is given when you reach the rate cap. 

Event Reports 

For a user who is not a system administrator, the maximum number of records that an event report returns is 20,000; for system administrators, 100,000. 

MAX_DML_ROWS limit in Apex testing 

In a single, synchronous Apex test execution context, the maximum number of rows that can be inserted, updated, or deleted is limited to 450,000. If you have reached the cap, you will see this error: Your run all tests is consuming too many DB resources. 

SOQL Query Performance 

The system will terminate nonselective SOQL queries to avoid long execution times. When a non-selective query in a trigger executes against an object that contains more than 200,000 documents, developers receive an error message.

Advantages of Governor Limits

• Apex has coding limitations that are entirely different or unique. 
• Governor limits help us remain inside the required apex coding place. 
• Governor limits prevent other org to take up a lot of space in memory. 

How to avoid Governor Limits

We need to make sure that our code is flexible and does not surpass the governor limits. But sometimes we need to avoid these limits to fulfill the requirements. We can avoid salesforce governor limits using the following process: 

• In For Loops, do not use SOQL queries and DML statements
• Ensure that the Apex code manage more than one record at a time 
• Querying vast amounts of data
• Use Batch Apex for 50,000 records 
• Organize multiple triggers on the same page 
• Use collection for loops 
• Use @future annotation
• Use of the Limits Apex Methods to Avoid Hitting Governor Limits 

SuMMARY

Salesforce has several different forms of governor limits, and which help us to become more effective developers and administrators. We can avoid them using the best approaches. Click Here for more details.

If you have any questions you can reach out our Salesforce Consulting team here.