Mastering Salesforce Development: Essential Coding Best Practices for AppExchange Success
Ever thought of creating a blockbuster Salesforce app that dominates the AppExchange? If so, this blog post is for you!
We'll be diving deep into the essential coding best practices one should follow to craft an app that not only thrives across different customer setups but also aces the AppExchange security review on the first try.
From the power of Apex to the finesse of Visualforce and Lightning, we'll equip you with expert insights and code snippets to elevate your coding game.
Why Coding Best Practices Matter?
Coding Best Practices: The Key to Successful Salesforce Projects
Think of best practices as the recommended steps to turn your code from ordinary to robust and optimized. With best practices, you can ensure your app runs smoothly, stays secure, and is easy for everyone to use. Plus, following such guidelines can make your code more maintainable, saving you time and frustration in the long run.
Another sweet perk? Acing the AppExchange security review becomes a breeze, saving you from rework and delays.
Also Read: How Does AppExchange Security Review Work?
Apex Best Practices for Salesforce Development
Multiple programming languages are used to develop a full-fledged Salesforce application. Apex is one of those crucial ones. So what is it and where is it used?
“Apex enables developers to access the Salesforce platform back-end database and client-server interfaces to create third-party SaaS applications like those listed on the AppExchange marketplace. ”
Developers use Apex for a wide variety of tasks including:
Automating Processes: Automatically updating records or sending emails when certain actions happen.
Custom Business Logic: Creating custom rules and workflows beyond the standard Salesforce capabilities.
Database Operations: Managing data, such as querying the database, updating records, and ensuring data integrity.
Integrations: Connecting Salesforce with other systems, allowing them to talk to each other.
While Salesforce's Apex language is a powerful tool for developers, harnessing its full potential requires adhering to best practices related to performance optimization, code maintainability, and other aspects.
Here are some key Apex best practices in Salesforce to follow in your day-to-day work:
A) Performance Optimization
Want your Apex code to run seamlessly? Follow these apex best practices suggested by our experts:
1. Bulkify your code to minimize database operations and reduce the risk of hitting governor limits.
2. Avoid SOQL Queries Inside FOR Loops as they can exceed governor limits and impact performance. Instead, run a single SOQL query outside the loop and process the results within the loop.
3. Use collections like lists, sets, and maps to enhance your code's efficiency. Maps, for instance, are quite useful for quick lookups and data manipulations, helping avoid repetitive queries and reducing code complexity.
B) Code Maintainability
Code maintainability is another important aspect you should emphasize. Follow these practices to ensure high-quality Apex code:
1. Avoid Hardcoding Salesforce Record IDs especially when moving the code between different environments. Instead, use custom settings, custom metadata types, or queries to dynamically retrieve the necessary IDs. This practice ensures that your code is more flexible and easier to maintain.
2. Adopting good naming conventions makes your code more readable and easier to understand. Use self-explanatory names for variables, methods, classes, and interfaces.
3. Use comments to describe the purpose and functionality of interfaces, classes, and methods. This will make code easier to understand, troubleshoot, and extend.
4. Use apex design patterns wherever possible. Here are the important ones to consider:
Separation of Concerns: Divide your code into distinct layers such as Service, Selector, and Domain layers. This separation ensures that each layer has a single responsibility, making your code easier to manage and test.
Factory Pattern: Use the factory pattern to create instances of classes. This approach abstracts the instantiation process and makes your code more flexible and scalable.
Singleton Pattern: For utility classes that are stateless and only need one instance, implement the singleton pattern. This ensures that only one instance of the class is created, saving memory and improving performance.
5. Avoid duplicating code by writing reusable methods and classes. Reusable code is easier to maintain and update and can help you limit bugs and inconsistencies.
C)Additional Points
Here are some additional pointers on best practices for Apex code:
Avoid Calling Future Methods from Triggers
Future methods are useful for executing asynchronous processes, but calling them directly from triggers can lead to cascading future calls and performance issues. Instead, use queueable or scheduled Apex to handle asynchronous operations more effectively.
Use Limits Methods to Monitor Governor Limits
Salesforce imposes governor limits to ensure efficient use of resources. Consider utilizing Apex's Limits methods, such as Limits.getQueries(), to monitor and stay within these limits.
Salesforce Apex Code Best Practices for Security
Security is an essential need for any Salesforce AppExchange solution. To help you keep the security of your AppExchange apps intact, here are some security best practices for writing Apex code:
1. The DML and Query support an accessLevel parameter that lets users run database and search operations in user mode instead of the default system mode.
Read More: Secure Apex Code with User Mode Database Operations
2. Use the WITH SHARING or INHERITED SHARING keywords so classes run with context user’s accessible records. If needed use WITHOUT SHARING keywords on a class and include the business use case in false positive reports to justify the need for it.
3. Always use HTTPS when connecting to any external endpoints to push or pull data into Salesforce as a part of your application.
4. Prevent SOQL Injection by employing static queries as the primary approach. When dynamic queries are unavoidable, ensure their safety by either utilizing binding variables or appropriately escaping variable values.
5. Do not store secrets in code. Use protected custom settings, custom metadata, or named credentials as appropriate.
6. Use debug statements for diagnosing issues in the functionality of an application, however, note that they should not publicly disclose sensitive or overly detailed information (this includes PII, passwords, keys, etc.).
7. Never send usernames, passwords, or API tokens in URLs as URLs can leak sensitive information via GET requests.
8. Prevent SOQL Injection, XSS, CSRF, etc. vulnerabilities to keep your app safe from attacks that can lead to breach and security failure.
Visualforce Best Practices for Salesforce Development
Visualforce, Salesforce's web development framework, is a go-to tool for building custom user interfaces within Salesforce applications. As a core component of the Salesforce platform, Visualforce allows you to extend and customize beyond the standard Salesforce UI as per your specific needs.
Whether you extend or customize Salesforce UI is up to your needs. However, while you do build your solution, try to follow recommended Visualforce coding best practices. This will help you boost code performance, user experience, security, and other requirements from any Salesforce application.
A)Performance Optimization
1. Whenever possible, use Salesforce's standard controllers and built-in Visualforce components to streamline your development process and enhance performance.
2. To speed up page load times, limit the use of view state. Utilize the transient keyword for variables that don't need to be serialized.
3. For large datasets, use pagination to improve load times and user experience.
4. Opt for JavaScript and Ajax for partial page updates to minimize server round-trips.
B) User Experience
1. Ensure error messages are clear and concise to aid user understanding and troubleshooting.
2. Utilize Visualforce components such as ‘<apex:component>’ to create reusable code, enhancing maintainability and reducing redundancy.
3. Go for a well-designed and optimized page layout to enhance user interaction and satisfaction.
C)Additional Pointers
Prevent XSS attacks by thoroughly sanitizing user inputs.
Use static resources for JavaScript, CSS, and images to improve performance and bundle these resources to minimize HTTP requests.
Encapsulate reusable functionality in Visualforce components and custom controllers to simplify maintenance and updates.
Lightning Component Best Practices
Lightning components such as Aura and LWC allow developers to build dynamic, responsive applications for mobile and desktop devices. Not just that, Lightning components also allow you to create custom UIs, single-page apps, integrations, dashboards, and reports.
Similar to Apex and Visualforce coding, using Lightning components and building upon them can result in several coding errors. Follow these Lightning component best practices to overcome various challenges related to performance, security, and other aspects.
A) Performance Optimization
1. Employ client-side caching and asynchronous calls to minimize server round trips.
2. Use lightning:recordEditForm or lightning:recordViewForm for standard record operations to streamline data handling.
3. Utilize Lightning Data Service for CRUD operations to minimize the need for Apex server calls.
4. Avoid loading and processing excessive data on the client side to enhance performance.
5. Limit the number of components rendered on a page to prevent performance degradation. Use conditional rendering (if:true, if:false) to load components based on specific conditions.
6. Implement lazy loading for large datasets to improve initial page load times.
7. Use Lightning Events for efficient inter-component communication. For broader communication across the Lightning app, utilize application events.
8. Reducing direct DOM manipulation improves performance. Keep client-side logic concise and offload complex operations to server-side Apex controllers.
B) General Best Practices
Don’t forget to follow these general best practices we’ve compiled for you:
Validate and sanitize user input to prevent XSS and other security vulnerabilities.
Design components to be reusable to minimize code duplication. Break down complex UI into smaller, reusable components.
Ensure components are accessible to all users by following WCAG guidelines.
Write comprehensive unit tests for client-side JavaScript controllers.
Set the 'isExposed' flag to false in Lightning Message Channels unless necessary.
Keep CSS within component files rather than inline to comply with the Content Security Policy (CSP).
Avoid using fixed, absolute, or float in CSS to maintain modularity and compatibility.
Mitigate CSS data theft risk by avoiding dynamically generated CSS selectors based on user input.
Use the latest versions of JavaScript libraries and upload external libraries as static resources.
Configure CSP directives to permit access to third-party resources if needed.
Avoid using the blob: schema in the frame-src directive to prevent clickjacking attempts.
Disallow inline JavaScript in event handlers to comply with CSP directives.
Naming Conventions & Structure
Adopting a consistent naming convention is crucial for enhancing the maintainability and readability of your codebase. Try to:
Follow a consistent naming convention for classes, components, methods, and properties.
Organize components into a logical folder structure for better maintainability.
Testing Best Practices
Aim for 100% Code Coverage. While Salesforce requires a minimum of 75%, strive for 100% to ensure robustness.
Use Test Setup methods to reduce test execution time by creating test data in bulk.
Do bulk and single record testing.
Aim to have good assertions for each checkpoint. For example, if a trigger is modifying a field value based on some condition make sure to apply asserts when the condition meets true the value must be changed and when it's false it must not be changed.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
XSS is a vulnerability where attackers inject malicious scripts into web pages viewed by other users. In Salesforce, XSS can compromise user data and session tokens. However, Salesforce automatically forces prevention for it by escaping the data. But in case this is being compromised use the following:
Visualforce: Visualforce pages have built-in protection against XSS by escaping data by default.
HTML Encoding: Encode output to prevent scripts from executing. Use methods like JSENCODE(), HTMLENCODE(), and JSINHTMLENCODE().
Strict CSP (Content Security Policy): Define a strong CSP to limit the sources from which scripts can be loaded.
Security Review: Regularly conduct security reviews and use Salesforce’s built-in tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities.
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CSRF attacks trick the user into executing unwanted actions on a web application in which they’re authenticated. These actions are carried out with the user’s credentials without their knowledge.
CSRF Tokens: Use anti-CSRF tokens to ensure that requests are made by authenticated users. Salesforce automatically includes CSRF tokens in Visualforce pages.
POST Requests: Prefer using POST requests for actions that modify data, as GET requests are more susceptible to CSRF.
Enable CSRF Protection in Security Settings: Ensure that CSRF protection is enabled in your Salesforce organization’s security settings.
Custom Controllers: When using custom controllers or Visualforce pages, explicitly handle CSRF tokens.
Version Control and Deployment
Besides following essential coding practices for application design, security, and development, teams should put some emphasis on ensuring strong version control and deployment. For this:
Use a version control system (e.g., Git) to manage code changes. Follow branching strategies to manage development, testing, and production environments.
Implement continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipelines for automated testing and deployment.
Code Scan & Review
To ensure the quality, security, and compliance of the Salesforce code for the AppExchange app implement the following:
Utilize static code analysis tools such as CodeScan, PMD, or SonarQube to automatically review Apex, Visualforce, and Lightning code for potential issues, including security vulnerabilities, performance bottlenecks, and coding best practices violations.
Scan the APIs via OWASP, ZAP etc.
Ensure compliance with Salesforce security and development best practices, as well as industry standards and regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) by conducting comprehensive compliance checks using specialized tools or manual reviews.
Encourage manual code reviews by peers/experienced developers, and integrate scans into CI pipelines.
Document the findings from code scans and reviews, including identified issues, recommended remediation steps, and any exceptions or false positives. Prioritize and address critical issues promptly to ensure code quality and security.
Provide developer training on best practices and security principles.
Conclusion
So that was it!
In this blog, we tried to cover the most important best practices for coding Apex, Visualforce, and Lightning Components. We also covered other key essentials such as naming conventions, version control and deployment, testing, and key vulnerabilities such as XSS and CSRF.
Try to follow these practices as you surge ahead with your development projects. By following the best coding practices, as listed above, we are sure, you’ll develop high-quality AppExchange applications that are optimally performing, secure, maintainable, and compliant with Salesforce standards.
In case you experience any blockers, we’re there to help. Connect with our team at Concretio, leading Salesforce Development Company with 200+ certifications and 100+ development experts ready to help you navigate any development hurdle.
Further Reading
FAQs
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Here are some practices to secure your Apex code:
-Running database operations in user mode using the accessLevel parameter.
-Using WITH SHARING or INHERITED SHARING keywords to respect user permissions.
-Always using HTTPS for external endpoints.
-Preventing SOQL injection with static queries or binding variables.
-Avoiding storing secrets in code and using protected custom settings or named credentials.
-
To optimize Visualforce pages:
-Use Salesforce's standard controllers and built-in components.
-Limit view state size and use the transient keyword for non-essential variables.
-Implement pagination for large datasets.
-Use JavaScript and Ajax for partial page updates to reduce server round-trips.
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Best practices for version control and deployment include:
-Using a version control system like Git to manage code changes.
-Following branching strategies for different environments.
-Implementing CI/CD pipelines for automated testing and deployment.
-Conducting static code analysis and manual code reviews to ensure quality and security.
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Ensure your application passes the security review by:
-Following coding best practices and Salesforce security guidelines.
-Conducting comprehensive code scans and manual reviews.
-Documenting and addressing identified security issues promptly.
-Providing developer training on security principles and best practices.
