MultiSelect and JQuery/Javascript

I had a requirement to give users a way to quickly select a couple of values in a multi-select picklist based on some other value they had previously selected on the form.  In our case, if the selected Language was X, then pick Region 1, Region 3, and Region 4 from the multi-select picklist automatically.

This one took a while to piece together so hopefully this will help someone out.

On my VF page, I created an anchor tag to act like a "Command Link":

  <a href="javascript:void(0);" id="selectAllRegions">[Select All Regions for Language]</a></span>

Using some jquery, I catch the click as follows:

  j('#selectAllRegions').click(function () {

        selectRegions('{!$Component.regionsMS}');

        });

The regionsMS id is the id of your multiselect apex:inputfield.

The "selectRegions" function does the following:

function selectRegions(objId){

    var multiSelect;

    var unSelectedId = objId + "_unselected";

    var selectedId = objId + "_selected";

   

    multiSelect = document.getElementById(unSelectedId);

        for (i = 0; i < multiSelect.options.length; i++) {

            if(multiSelect.options[i].text == "Region 1"){

            multiSelect.options[i].selected = true;}

        }

        javascript:MultiSelectPicklist.handleMSPSelect(objId);

}

The key to making this work was this last function, which came up in a search here (there's some other NSFW stuff there, just fyi).  If you use firebug or chrome's developer tools, you'll see how the script interacts with the elements that make up the multiselect control.

And there you have it - when you click the link "Select All Regions for Language", Region 1 is selected.  All that needs to be done now, is evaluate the selected language and then change which region values are selected.

Rich Text Editors

On a recent project, I was asked to implement a visualforce page with rich text editing capability.  As I've come to learn, when you put an <apex:inputTextArea> tag inside a visualforce page, you don't get a rich text editor.  You get a text area.  No toolbars for formatting, unlike the standard layouts.  The standard layout editor appears to be ckeditor but if you're using visualforce, you have to put in the rich text editor yourself.  Fortunately, there are lots of editors out there.  I had no idea.

Based on the project needs and features, I ended up implementing the following for user evaluation:

1. TinyMCE
2. CKEditor
3. NicEdit
4. Redactor

TinyMCE ended up being the selected editor, mostly because of the ICE plugin.  I use strikingly to power my website and strikingly uses TinyMCE as it's editor.  It's fairly straightforward to implement:

1. Download TinyMCE and upload the zip it as a static resource
1. If you're using ICE, you'll need to include it in your plugin directory, rezip, and upload
2. Update you visualforce page as follows

<apex:includeScript value="{!URLFOR($Resource.tinymce, 'tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/tiny_mce.js')}"/> 

...

<apex:inputTextArea value="{!TEST__c.Some_Field__c}" id="somefield" style="width:100%;" styleclass="mceEditor"/>
<!--this is the initialization required for TINYMCE  -->
                <script type="text/javascript">
                   tinymce.init({
                            mode : "textareas",
                            editor_selector :"mceEditor",
                            theme : "advanced",
                            plugins : "ice,icesearchreplace,spellchecker,pagebreak,style,layer,table,contextmenu,paste,directionality,fullscreen,noneditable,visualchars,nonbreaking,xhtmlxtras,template,visualchars,wordcount",
                            theme_advanced_buttons1: 'ice_togglechanges,ice_toggleshowchanges,iceacceptall,icerejectall,iceaccept,icereject,|,bold,italic,underline,strikethrough,|,justifyleft,justifycenter,justifyright,justifyfull,|,styleselect,formatselect,fontselect,fontsizeselect',
                            theme_advanced_buttons2: 'spellchecker,cut,copy,paste,pastetext,pasteword,|,search,replace,|,bullist,numlist,|,outdent,indent,blockquote,|,undo,redo,|,link,unlink,anchor,image,cleanup,help,code,|,forecolor,backcolor',
                            theme_advanced_buttons3: 'tablecontrols,wordcount',
                            theme_advanced_buttons4: "",
                            theme_advanced_toolbar_location: "top",
                            theme_advanced_toolbar_align: "left",
                            theme_advanced_toolbar_location : "top",
                            theme_advanced_statusbar_location : "bottom",
                            theme_advanced_resizing : true,
                            ice: {
                                          user: { name: '{!$User.Alias}', id: '{!$User.Alias}'},
                                          preserveOnPaste: 'p,a[href],i,em,strong'
                                },
                            width: "100%",
                            height: "200"      
                        });
                </script>

I highlighted a couple sections that are noteworthy:

You need to mention that you're using TinyMCE so you'll need the <apex: includeScript> tag
You can have multiple TextArea fields on your page and selectively enable TinyMCE using the editor_selector property when you initialize the editor.  Just set the styleClass property on your text area fields that you want to override with TinyMCE.
If you're using ICE, the modification here allows you to capture the user who edits the text.


And if all goes well, you should have something like this:

Deployment Failure

I recently assisted an organization with developing a couple of triggers to help them roll up some child data onto the parent records.  On the evening we were set to deploy, we ran into a couple issues, both of which could be filed under "WTF":

1. Change Sets were disabled for the organization
2. Deploying via Eclipse generated over 150 errors in the managed packages that were installed in their org

The client's system admin cases opened for both issues - the first with Salesforce, the second with the managed package vendor.

The response from the managed package vendor was illuminating so I wanted to share.  They forwarded us this community thread in which the question of managed package errors was settled:

http://boards.developerforce.com/t5/Apex-Code-Development/Unit-Test-Code-Coverage-and-Managed-Packages/m-p/471121#M86324

In summary: if you deploy with change sets, managed package code is ignored.  If you deploy with Eclipse, you're out of luck if there are test class failures in the managed package.  

Will update the blog with Salesforce's explanation of issue #1.