Reid Carlberg

Connected Devices, salesforce.com & Other Adventures

Tag Archives: lightning components

9:03 am - March 5, 2015 -

Access IoT Data in Salesforce using Heroku Connect OData

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Yesterday I wrote about getting IoT Data into Heroku.  It’s pretty cool, but other than looking at a Heroku PostgreSQL Dataclip, there’s not a lot you can do with the super simple IoT host app I built.  Which made me wonder:

OK, I have the data. Now what?

Well, my usual tool of choice is Force.com, but this kind of high-frequency, low-difference data doesn’t work well when fully imported to that environment. This got me thinking about two relatively new and completely exciting things: Lightning Connect and Heroku Connect External Objects.

Lightning Connect (earlier blog, cool tutorial) is a product that includes external data in Salesforce by reference — the data is accessed via the OData protocol and is never copied into your org.  Hence it does not count against storage limits. Heroku Connect (Pat’s awesome blog) is all about easy data synchronization between Salesforce and a Heroku PostgreSQL database. But Heroku Connect also includes an External Objects (@vzmind‘s awesome blog) option that publishes any Heroku PostgreSQL table you request in OData format.

So, um ….. HOLY SHIT I WONDER IF THIS WILL WORK.

I started by adding the Heroku Connect add-on and then opening it.

heroku addons:add herokuconnect
heroku addons:open herokuconnect

Heroku Connect demo edition is free, which is great, but you’ll need to file a ticket to have External Objects activated. Once that is done it’s super simple. Note: External Objects are activated per app, not per user. If you create a new app, you’ll need to request them again.

Start by creating a connection:

heroku-connect-create-connection

Next initialize your username and password.  These will come to your email.

heroku-connect-start

You’ll now see your OData URL as well as a list of tables you might want to share.  Note that the listing of available tables appears to be an asynchronous process — it takes a minute for them to show up. Grab a cup of coffee. Then check the ones you want to share.

heroku-connect-readings-shared

External Data Source configuration is super easy (with many examples), the only difference here being that the Identity Type is Named Principal and the Authentication Protocol is Password Authentication.  Settings example below based on my setup.

force-external-data-source-with-username-password

And now we have the Heroku Readings object in Salesforce!

heroku-readings-in-salesforce

Which is super cool.  But we can make it cooler by connecting this IoT data with something meaningful in Salesforce.  For example, a Device record. As long as I have an External ID field on the Device, I can create an Indirect Lookup between that Device and the Heroku Readings by modifying the Reading’s “Device Name” field type.

create-indirect-lookup-between-device-and-data]

And now we have live IoT data meaningfully connected to Salesforce data without importing it and using up storage.

heroku-connect-device-with-data

Which, I gotta say, feels pretty much like a HOLY SHIT moment to me.

Category: Development Tags: , , , ,
3:33 pm - February 24, 2015 -

Experiment Faster with Lightning Components & Force.com (Mo Tester Update)

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Update from 2015-03-06: Mo Tester Octothorpe

TL;DR: Updated Mo Tester, install link on Github Repo.

Back in the day I wrote a post called Experiment Faster on Force.com where I confessed to blatantly stealing an idea from Mr. Steve Molis himself.

It was SteveMo’s idea to have a dev org with a bunch of objects already built, objects with fields of every shape.  My add was to create a package out of it, so that other users could try things out more quickly than if they had to build everything themselves.

Hence: Mo Tester.  Mo Tester is lab equipment for your Developer Edition.  It gives you a pre-defined framework for messing around with many kinds of Force.com goodies, and now includes some basic Lightning Components for your enjoyment.

This update:

  • has an new Visualforce controller (which inspired a post on Refactoring Visualforce Controllers for Lightning Components)
  • includes a Mo Tester Lightning Tab suitable for immediate inclusion in your DE’s mobile navigation
  • demonstrates several Salesforce1 Lightning Component events including (drum roll) a SHOW TOASTER button.

Hopefully this update helps you go faster as you’re discovering what you can do on the platform.

Questions? Comments? Feedback? LMK!

@ReidCarlberg

Category: Development Tags: , , , ,
12:25 pm - February 22, 2015 -

Refactoring Visualforce Controllers for Lightning Components

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You might remember Mo Tester, the package that helps you Experiment Faster on Force.com. I’m tweaking it for some Lightning Component stuff (spoiler alert) and ran into this.  (Posting to the Lightning Newbie Notes too.)

The following code won’t compile. You’ll get a handy Return type does not support AuraEnabled error because — wait for it — the @AuraEnabled annotation doesn’t support PageReference return types.

@AuraEnabled
public PageReference createMoTester1() {
    SmartFactory.FillAllFields = true;
    LAB_Mo_Tester_1__c t = (LAB_Mo_Tester_1__c) 
           SmartFactory.createSObject('LAB_Mo_Tester_1__c');
    insert t;
    return new PageReference('/'+t.id);
}

You need to refactor your Visualforce controller to have two methods, one for your existing code, one for your new Lightning Component.  Also, the @AuraEnabled method needs to be static.

public PageReference createMoTester1() {
    Id myMo = LAB_CreateDataHelper.getNewMoTester1Id();
    return new PageReference('/'+myMo);        
}    

@AuraEnabled
public static Id getNewMoTester1Id() {
    SmartFactory.FillAllFields = true;
    LAB_Mo_Tester_1__c t = (LAB_Mo_Tester_1__c) 
           SmartFactory.createSObject('LAB_Mo_Tester_1__c');
    insert t;  
    return t.id;                
}

Note that in this case, based on the way my test classes are structured, this didn’t affect my code coverage. It was 100% before, it’s 100% after.

Incidentally, not supporting PageReference return types is perfectly logical when you think about it.  PageReferences are a Visualforce thing after all.

Also note that, yes, I’m bewildered by my choice of method names here, too.  Also, the original package doesn’t seem to use this method.  And the test coverage in the package didn’t include coverage for the StandardController and StandardSetController dependent constructors. What was I thinking???

Looking at old (ish) code is fun.

Update 2/23/15 — I did use the button, on the list view.  I just didn’t inspect hard enough.  Phew & Sheesh!mo-tester-button-found

 

Also the method has to be static.  Whoops!

Category: Development Tags: , , ,
4:54 pm - February 20, 2015 -

Salesforce Lightning Component Newbie Notes

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Like a lot of you, I recently started down the path of learning Lightning Components. These are my notes and code snippets based on a series of questions I asked as I went through the docs and tutorials. I hope you find them useful.

Salesforce Lightning Component Newbie Notes

This is the first time I’ve used Jekyll and markdown to create a relatively extended blog post.  Pretty convenient!

Category: Development Tags: ,
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