VisualForce Lookup

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As VisualForce developers know, adding an inputfield backed by a lookup or master detail field renders a field to enter a text string into and a magnifying glass icon for launching the Salesforce lookup popup. There isn't much customization possible for the lookup popup, so often there is a need to replace it with one matching your own requirement.

This blog entry shows how to create your own visualforce lookup page backed by a custom controller that gives you full control.

My basic page for demonstrating custom lookup functionality is shown below:

The Lookup link pops up the lookup window.  Search text is entered into the input field and clicking the Go button returns the results into the results section:

Clicking the name populates the lookup text field on the main page, and to prove that it is working, clicking the Get Contacts button retrieves the contacts associated with the account:

The first point to mention regarding lookups is that there are actually two fields that are filled in on the target page when you select a lookup result.  The name of the selected item is displayed in the visible field, but names are not unique so this is not enough information to uniquely identify the chosen item.  Thus there is a hidden field that captures the the ID of the selected record.

Below is a snippet of a VisualForce page that contains my custom lookup combination field.  For the sake of simplicity I've chosen to use a clickable link to launch the lookup dialog.

<apex:pageBlock title="Lookup">
      <apex:pageBlockSection columns="1">
        <apex:pageBlockSectionitem >
          <apex:outputLabel value="Account"/>
          <apex:outputPanel >
         <apex:inputHidden value="{!accountId}" id="targetId" />
            <apex:inputText size="40" value="{!accountName}" id="targetName" onFocus="this.blur()" disabled="false"/> <a href="#" onclick="openLookupPopup('{!$Component.targetName}', '{!$Component.targetId}'); return false">Lookup</a>
          </apex:outputPanel>
        </apex:pageBlockSectionitem>
      </apex:pageBlockSection>
      <apex:pageBlockSection >
        <apex:pageBlockSectionitem >
           <apex:commandButton value="Get Contacts" action="{!findContacts}"/>
        </apex:pageBlockSectionitem>
      </apex:pageBlockSection>
    </apex:pageBlock>

Digging into the markup, we can see that as well as the text field and link, the hidden field to capture the link is also present.  When the user clicks the link, the following javascript is executed to open the popup.  Note that the HTML element ids are passed as parameters to the popup page - this allows the popup to locate the fields to populate when the user makes a selection.  Note also that the javascript function to close the popup window is located in the main page, not the popup page.  This is required as browsers often only allow a window to be closed by the same page that opened it.

<script>
 var newWin=null;
 function openLookupPopup(name, id)
 {
  var url="/apex/LookupExamplePopup?namefield=" + name + "&idfield=" + id;
  newWin=window.open(url, 'Popup','height=500,width=600,left=100,top=100,resizable=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbar=no,status=no');
  if (window.focus) 
  {
   newWin.focus();
  }
   
     return false;
    }
      
 function closeLookupPopup()
 {
    if (null!=newWin)
    {
       newWin.close();
    }  
 }
</script>

Now we move on to the popup VisualForce page. This consists of a criteria section and a results table.  Clicking the Go button invokes a controller action method that executes a SOSL query to retrieve all accounts matching the input string. The VisualForce markup for the results table is shown below.

<apex:pageBlock >
          <apex:pageBlockSection columns="1">
              <apex:pageBlockTable value="{!accounts}" var="account">
                <apex:column headerValue="Name">
                  <apex:outputLink value="#" onclick="fillIn('{!account.Name}', '{!account.id}')">{!account.Name}</apex:outputLink>       
                </apex:column>
                <apex:column headerValue="Street" value="{!account.BillingStreet}"/>
                <apex:column headerValue="City" value="{!account.BillingCity}"/>
                <apex:column headerValue="Postcode" value="{!account.BillingPostalCode}"/>
              </apex:pageBlockTable>    
          </apex:pageBlockSection>
        </apex:pageBlock>

As you can see, the account name column is actually a link that invokes a JavaScript function shown below:

function fillIn(name, id)
   {
      var winMain=window.opener;
      if (null==winMain)
      {
         winMain=window.parent.opener;
      }
      var ele=winMain.document.getElementById('{!$CurrentPage.parameters.namefield}');
      ele.value=name;
      ele=winMain.document.getElementById('{!$CurrentPage.parameters.idfield}');
      ele.value=id;
      CloseWindow();
   }

   function CloseWindow()
   {
      var winMain=window.opener;
      if (null==winMain)
      {
         winMain=window.parent.opener;
      }
      winMain.closeLookupPopup();
   }

This JavaScript is the glue between the two pages - it fills in the HTML elements in the main page and closes the popup window.

The pages and controllers can be downloaded here. Simply unzip into the src directory of your Force.com project in the IDE.

Rotating a VisualForce table

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One issue that crops up repeatedly on the SalesForce Developer Discussion Boards is how to rotate a table. E.g. if I have a table that displays account information one account per row:

how can I rotate this to display one account per column:

First, to create a class to model the data that is being passed back to the page. In this case the class wraps a row of data, thus row 1 contains the name of each account, row2 contains the street address etc.

As each cell in the table is a text field, our class can simply wrap a list of String primitives. The  class implementation is shown below:

public class RowWrapper
    {
     // the values (cells) making up this row
     public List<String> values {get; set;}
     
     // constructor
     public RowWrapper()
     {
      values=new List<String>();
     }
     
     // append a value (cell) to the row
     public void addValue(String value)
     {
      values.add(value);
     }
    }

The next step is to write an extension to the Account standard controller that transforms a list of Accounts into a list of RowWrapper classes.

	// retrieves the list of accounts backing the page
    public List<Account> getAccounts()
    {
    	if (null==accs)
    	{
    		accs=[select id, Name, BillingStreet, BillingCity, BillingPostalCode from Account
    	          where BillingCity != null and BillingPostalCode!=null limit 3];
    	}
    	
    	return accs;
    }
    
    // retrieves the list of row wrappers
    public List<RowWrapper> getRowWrappers()
    {
    	if (null==rows)
    	{
    		rows=new List<RowWrapper>();
    		
    		// create a row for each field - there are 4 of these, Name, Street, City and PostCode
    		for (Integer idx=0; idx<4; idx++)
    		{
    			rows.add(new RowWrapper());
    		}
    		
    		// iterate the accounts and populate the rows
    		for (Integer idx=0; idx<getAccounts().size(); idx++)
    		{
    			rows[0].addValue(getAccounts()[idx].Name);
    			rows[1].addValue(getAccounts()[idx].BillingStreet);
    			rows[2].addValue(getAccounts()[idx].BillingCity);
    			rows[3].addValue(getAccounts()[idx].BillingPostalCode);
    		}
    	}
    	
    	return rows;
    }

The final step is to create a VisualForce page to iterate the RowWrapper list and output the table:

<table class="list" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
    <tr class="headerRow  ">
      <apex:repeat value="{!headWrap.values}" var="heading">
        <th class="headerRow ">
           {!heading}
        </th>
      </apex:repeat>
    </tr>
    <apex:repeat value="{!rowWrappers}" var="row">
       <tr>
         <apex:repeat value="{!row.values}" var="value">
           <td>
             {!value}
           </td>
         </apex:repeat>
       </tr>
    </apex:repeat>
  </table>

The page and controller can be downloaded here. Simply unzip into the src directory of your Force.com project in the IDE.