Payment gateways are parimary requiremnt in most of the business application these days. Applications building up on force.com platform require payment gateways.

Integration of paypal seems to be a very common issue. One of my readers asked me to write the code to integrate paypal with apex.

Below I am writing the code which I wrote for a project. I hope this will help many of the apex developers. This particular method is for DoDirectPayment method.

public class PayPalApi
{
public static String result {set;get;}
public static String makeCallout(String amount, String shipToName, String shipToStreet1, String shipToStreet2, String shipToCity, String shipToState, String shipToPostalCode, String shipToCountry, String creditCardType, String creditCardNumber, String expMonth, String expYear, String payerFName, String payerLName, String payerCountry, String payerStreet1, String payerStreet2, String payerCity, String payerState, String payerPostalCode, String CVV2Number)
{ // Instantiate a new http object
Http h = new Http();
// Instantiate a new HTTP request, specify the method (GET) as well as the endpoint
HttpRequest req = new HttpRequest();
// The webservice url - Pass in the endpoint to be used using the string url
String url = 'https://api-3t.sandbox.paypal.com/2.0/';
String soapXML;


soapXML =  '<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=' + '\'' + 'http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/'  + '\'' + ' xmlns:xsi=' + '\''+ 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'  + '\'' + ' xmlns:xsd=' + '\''+ 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema' + '\'' + '>';
soapXML += '<soap:Header><RequesterCredentials xmlns="urn:ebay:api:PayPalAPI"><Credentials xmlns="urn:ebay:apis:eBLBaseComponents">';
soapXML += '<Username>PAYPAL_USER_NAME</Username><ebl:Password xmlns:ebl="urn:ebay:apis:eBLBaseComponents">';
soapXML += 'PAYPAL_PASSWORD</ebl:Password><Signature>PAYPAL_SIGNATURE</Signature>';
soapXML += '</Credentials></RequesterCredentials></soap:Header><soap:Body><DoDirectPaymentReq xmlns="urn:ebay:api:PayPalAPI">';
soapXML += '<DoDirectPaymentRequest><Version xmlns="urn:ebay:apis:eBLBaseComponents">1.00</Version>';
soapXML += '<DoDirectPaymentRequestDetails xmlns="urn:ebay:apis:eBLBaseComponents">';
soapXML += '<PaymentAction>Sale</PaymentAction><PaymentDetails><OrderTotal currencyID="USD">' + amount + '</OrderTotal>';
soapXML += '<ShipToAddress><Name>' + shipToName + '</Name><Street1>' + shipToStreet1 + '</Street1><Street2>' +shipToStreet2 + '</Street2>';
soapXML += '<CityName>' + shipToCity + '</CityName><StateOrProvince>' + shipToState + '</StateOrProvince><PostalCode>' + shipToPostalCode + '</PostalCode>';
soapXML += '<Country>' + shipToCountry + '</Country></ShipToAddress>';
soapXML += '</PaymentDetails><CreditCard><CreditCardType>' + creditCardType + '</CreditCardType><CreditCardNumber>' + creditCardNumber + '</CreditCardNumber>';
soapXML += '<ExpMonth>' + expMonth + '</ExpMonth><ExpYear>' + expYear + '</ExpYear><CardOwner><PayerStatus>verified</PayerStatus><Payer>bgiles@ddd.com</Payer>';
soapXML += '<PayerName><FirstName>' + payerFName+ '</FirstName><LastName>' + payerLName + '</LastName></PayerName><PayerCountry>' + payerCountry + '</PayerCountry>';
soapXML += '<Address><Street1>' + payerStreet1 + '</Street1><Street2>' + payerStreet2 + '</Street2><CityName>' + payerCity + '</CityName>';
soapXML += '<StateOrProvince>' + payerState + '</StateOrProvince><Country>' + payerCountry + '</Country><PostalCode>' + payerPostalCode + '</PostalCode></Address>';
soapXML += '</CardOwner><CVV2>' + CVV2Number + '</CVV2></CreditCard></DoDirectPaymentRequestDetails>';
soapXML += '</DoDirectPaymentRequest></DoDirectPaymentReq></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>';

req.setBody(soapXML);
req.setEndpoint(url);
req.setMethod('POST');
req.setHeader('Content-length', '1753' );
req.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/xml;charset=UTF-8'); req.setHeader('SOAPAction','');
req.setHeader('Host','api-aa.sandbox.paypal.com');

HttpResponse res = h.send(req);
String xml = res.getBody();

XmlStreamReader reader = res.getXmlStreamReader();
result = readXMLResponse(reader,'Ack');
return result;
}
public static String readXMLResponse(XmlStreamReader reader, String sxmltag)
{
string retValue; // Read through the XML
while(reader.hasNext())
{
if (reader.getEventType() == XmlTag.START_ELEMENT)
{
if (reader.getLocalName() == sxmltag) {
reader.next();
if (reader.getEventType() == XmlTag.characters)
{ retValue = reader.getText();
}
}
} reader.next();
}
return retValue;
}
}

Other paypal methods dont require this type of coding because they are mostly redirected to paypal website. If you need further help, feel free to ask questions.

P.S: This code is completely working. You just have to replace with your credentials.

Norma Villeda, right, has dinner with her family, Carlitos Garcia, 7, and Nancy Garcia, 18, while staying with Norma's sister-in-law in Apex on Dec. 9. Villeda, who immigrated illegally 20 years ago, has circled the date on the calendar (above) when she must leave the country.

From the Charlotte Observer:

In the five months since immigration agents knocked on her door, Norma Villeda has sold her home and furnishings and shuttered her husband’s business. She now sleeps in the living room of her sister-in-law’s trailer, what’s left of her possessions packed into three suitcases.

But the biggest loss has yet to come.

When she is returns to her native Mexico at the end of this month, at the order of U.S. immigration officials, she will leave behind her daughter, Nancy, a U.S.-born high school senior who aspires to go to college.

[Click here to read the rest of the article]

Oracle has made available a demonstration site of Apex 4.0. It’s hosted in the Amazon Elastic Compute cloud, adding further credibility to Apex as a cloud computing platform. Sign up here.

I signed up for an account and took a 15 minute test drive. Here a few quick things I noticed:

1. There are a number of screens under a new Team Development tab. These are all straightforward, but provide ready made data entry screens and reports for the information needed to track a development project. Bug lists, new feature lists, tasks, etc. It’s very handy to have these right in the product.

2. I was most curious to try out the new interactive report features. Compound expressions for filters are available. These were implemented as a separate choice from the existing filter feature. I imagine doing this means that existing 3.x interactive reports will run without any changes in 4.0. The new feature uses an interface similar to the 3.x one for doing computed columns. When creating an expression, one references existing fields in the report by using a letter instead of the column name. It allows one to put in complex AND and OR logic with lots of functions as well. I also tried the GROUP BY feature, which worked fine and was intuitive to deploy. Finally, I saw that under save report there is a “Public” checkbox, which would allow a user to make a saved report that is visible to other users. That is really needed.

3. The initial screen for editing a page now uses a tree view to navigate all the objects on a page. Once you get to an object you wish to edit, the edit pages look quite similar to the 3.x ones.

4. I made a few quick graphs and as promised a newer version of AnyChart is available. The graphs look great!

I hope to port some existing apps to the trial web site over the next few weeks. Note that Oracle will erase the whole site in order to put a phase II beta, so be prepared for your work to get erased if you try this site out!

All I can say is Wow!

That’s it.  Nothing more here…

… well, okay.  Some more details. 

These are not in any special order.

My Favorite Parts (so far)

1. Team Development components – Looks pretty well implemented overall, though some pieces still need some work.  It’s a well-considered project mgmt application built right into Apex for tracking milestones, features, todos and bugs in your various Apex applications.  When you edit a page in your application, you see counters for ToDos and Bugs that are linked to that page.  Very cool!
2. Top Applications list on the development environment home page.  So you can jump to the active app you need to work on right away.  It also shows a Top Users chart that counts development events (whatever they are?) in a selectable timeframe.  I’m not too sure that level of “friendly rivalry” will work in every shop!
3. Interactive Reports throughout Application Builder – It looks like everything that was a list-style report in previous Apex versions has been changed to an interactive report.  For example, in the Application Builder, the list of applications is an IR.  I think will be very handy, since you can save your favorite flavor of view as a saved report!  So you can choose sort order, what columns to display and save to this report for re-use later.  The power and usefulness here is gonna be epic!  Monitor page activity, group by Page Name and compute the average Elapsed Time!
4. Page Advizor – an integration of Patrick Wolf’s great utility right into the product.  You can have it instantly (very quick!) check a page you’re editing to make sure you haven’t violated any major development rules.  You can select which rules it checks.  No word on whether they’ll enable adding your own rules in the released product!
5. Search Application! A search box on the Application Builder’s application pages (e.g. Edit Application, Edit Page, etc) that very quickly searches your application for the entered phrase!  Very very slick and fast!
6. Plug-ins – Check out the sample application and tips that Patrick Wolf has already created.  Once you’ve installed these and learned the rules, most look straight-forward to implement in your code.

My Less-Favorite Parts so far

1. IRs now support a “Details” view, where you can lay out your own multi-row display by creating an HTML table and rows.  Pretty cool, but the end-user can’t determine what columns are displayed in that view.  So I’m not sure how that’s going to play out with end-users.  But I guess it’s better than having to build a separate report for them, eh?
2. I know this is an Early Adopter version, but there are lots of pieces that don’t work yet.  Such as saving your preference for the Development environment IRs doesn’t work yet.  So every time I return to the main page of the application I’m developing, it lists the pages in Icons view, which I hate, even though I’ve changed it to Reports view many times.  Yeah, it’s beta!  :-/
3. I really wanted to try out the new GANTT chart, but I keep getting an error message!  I tried to follow the sample query on the creation wizard, but no go.  I asked in the Apex forum, but so far no guidance.
4. I’m not too thrilled with the new font and design of the development environment, though maybe that’s just habit talking?  I’m looking at the Shared Components screen and the text looks really small for my 50-year-old eyes!  What do you think?

Anyway, it’s looking really good so far!

My compliments to the chefs!

Finally, happy holidays to all.

It’s a new day and with every new day comes a new perspective…could it have anything to do with the fact that it was 56° here in Denver??  Tomorrow’s the 1st day of winter you know!  Come to think of it why would you

Another crappy day here in Colorado...

know…the weather has been absolutely splendid here all week.  Admittedly, the warm air and bright blue sky might have played a role in today’s revelation, or maybe it had something to do with something else??

The boys in London are considering a date change…perhaps pushing out our start date by a few weeks in order to have a better shot at a successful summit.  Unfortunately, they are not doing a good job of communicating this information to those of us that are stateside.  I had a nice chat with Roger this morning and discovered that he is in the dark about this.  So he sent an inquisitive e-mail and yes, a date change is under review…apparently.  Just an observation, but if we are going to be a successful TEAM then we need to begin with open lines of communication…notice that word “TEAM” again??  Anyway…I’ll let you know how all that shakes out later.

Sarah on the Apex Trail

So back to my point…during my conversation with Roger I discovered that I am not alone in my anxiety!  Mental Preparedness is how Roger referred to it and he said that he is not there yet but he believes it will come in time.  This was a HUGE revelation to me and I take comfort in knowing that I am not alone.  So as Sarah and I did a training hike on Apex today, I unloaded all of the things that have me in a twist.  She acknowledged having some anxiety as well but went on to say that she has her head around it all and is prepared for the journey…meaning everything we have to do between now and then in order to be ready…meaning all of the training hikes however big or small, the additional course work we plan on doing, buying the necessary gear that we need, tweaking everything so that our systems are solid, talking it all through…all of these things she said will help us BE READY to take on the mountain…with all of these things comes Mental Preparedness. Epiphany…I get it!

We had a great hike today.  I carried 43lbs without issue except for some discomfort around my shoulder which I think is a remnant of Friday’s hike.  I wore my plastics and got a blister on the bottom of my big toe which I attribute to wearing the wrong socks…all of the right socks are in with the dirty clothes.

I also got a sweet treat today compliments of my Dad…new Hestra gloves and a fab Bentgate mug…THANKS DAD!!  Looking forward to toasty digits on a super cold day!! 

We can traverse a string in in order to search for a particular sort of expression. For example if we want to search a date expression from a string, we can use do that. For this to be done, we have PATTERN and MATCHER classes in apex.

I had to parse an email message to search for a regular expression. Using PATTERN class, we can set any kind of expression we have to search for. e.g

Pattern cpattern = Pattern.compile('[S][O]-(\\d{0,100})-(\\d{0,100})*');

The above statement sets a particular regular expression. In order to search this kind of expression in a string, we can use the following statement:

Matcher cmatcher = cpattern.matcher(myString);

We can set a Boolean variable which can return true or false if he value is found in the string or not:

myVar = cmatcher.find();

and if we want to get the part of the string that has been found in the given string:

myName2 = cmatcher.group();

The overall code looks like:

public class linkTestController {
public String myName {set;get;}
public String myName2 {set;get;}
public Boolean myVar {set;get;}
public Integer myVar2 {set;get;}

public linktestController()
{
myName = '1313 1231231 SO-20091217-000253   asdad   123  adasd';
Pattern cpattern = Pattern.compile('[S][O]-(\\d{0,100})-(\\d{0,100})*');
Matcher cmatcher = cpattern.matcher(myName );
myVar = cmatcher.find();
myName2 = cmatcher.group();
}

}
Now, if I display the value of myName2, it will return ‘SO-20091217-000253’ (without quotes) only.

Please feel free to ask any questions.

Check out my review of the latest issue of Apex featuring this great author. http://wp.me/PKaWq-o

Every Christian has had an apex.  A point where they desired nothing but Christ.  This was it.  The end all, be all of their relationship with God.  Everything made sense.  Birds sang, the sun shone ever so bright and the clouds parted.  Well, maybe it wasn’t so dramatic, but nonetheless, this was the point where we realized that this life was all about loving God and loving other people.

Then life came.  We got busy.  We got older.  We grew more concerned about stuff than God.  We grew more concerned with acquiring stuff than loving others.  And slowly, but surely it all slipped away [Not our stuff, that's okay. We made sure we didn't lose or give up that].  But, our apex was lost.  We tell ourselves that it was inevitable.  At some point, we had to leave the proverbial mountaintop and sojourn back to real life.  We say that we had to grow up and focus on more grown up things.

But is this what Christianity is all about?  That one magical moment where it all made sense.  Maybe after searching high and low, that apex is it for us.  And sadly, many of us are okay with that.  However, as Christians, we shouldn’t be.  We should not be okay with that “one shining moment.”  But we are because to get back to that point would require work from us.  It would require us to put on our big boy pants and do some heavy soul-searching.  It would also mean that life would never be the same for us.  We might have to give up our pursuit of stuff.  We would have to love God completely.

You get out what you put in.  If you are okay with the minimum, fine.  If not, do something about it.

MATT OWNER OF 33THIRD APOLOGIZES TO REVOK from WWW.REVOK1.COM on Vimeo.

Okay, the little bugg showed up on Friday afternoon.  I got everything all set up Friday evening and left it to charge overnight.  Saturday morning around 7am I strapped it on and away I went.

First, I’m not a computer wiz, but I’m very computer literate and versed.  The set up was not a problem.  I felt as if everything was extremely easy.  Even getting the little bugg out of the armband was literally a snap.  I didn’t ready any of the instructions, but I’m mechanically minded and that was extraordinarily easy.  I’m running the bugg on a HP laptop (can’t remember what kind) with Windows Vista.  So far, so good.

The most difficult part of the set-up was waiting for the bugg to charge.  I was anxious to get it on and see how it worked.

Saturday morning I put it on as directed – left arm, on the rear/tricept with the words facing up,  and I went about my day.  My initial impression was that it was comfortable, like I’ve seen many people say.  That was good.  I did some home improvement activities.  And since I had already been tracking my food intake, that wasn’t a big deal.  I’m already being very aware of what I’m eating – to the tune of over 2#’s in my first 5 days, but granted a lot was likely water weight from cutting out alcohol and laying off the salt.

My initial impressions of the Apex/BodyBugg food tracking software – it’s burdensome.  It’s set up primarily in grams, ounces, etc., especially if you have to enter food that is not already in the system.  Honestly, it’s a bit of a pain in the tushie, and I’m not in love with their food tracking components.  I hear that it’s come a long way…goodness, I can’t imagine what it was like before.  *shudder*  My biggest complaint is that when trying to enter foods not already in the system you have to have grams, or some other foreign measurement (not like foreign country, just foreign to me).  I don’t think in grams, etc.  I think in tablespoons, servings, etc.  I’m adjusting to it, but it’s cumbersome to me, and not preferred.  We’ll see how things progress on this front.

Another food entry issue I’ve come across today is a deviation between what the nutritional information on a food item is and what Apex has it as.  Today I entered my frozen lunch, which was already in the Apex system, only to find it has 50 more calories, twice as much fat, less carbohydrates and a smidge more protein.  Does it make a HUGE difference, at the end of my day, probably not, but I’m baffled by this right now.  I’m noting this as something I want to address when I have my phone consultation with the Apex people.

Enough about the food part.

As for the actual devise.  Like I mentioned, it’s actually pretty comfortable, and I don’t necessarily notice it.  I’m sure that as time goes on, I’ll notice it less and less.  I do take it off twice a day, once in the morning while enjoying a cup of coffee and catching up on emails and once in the evening after dinner.  I upload my information both those times.

Like I have said, daytime comfort is good.  Nighttime is pretty good as well, but I’ve been woken up both nights so far with the velcro part of the strap.  It’s not scratching me, but I feel it in my sleep and its somewhat uncomfortable.  I don’t know if I need to switch to the smaller strap so that the velcro piece is located in a different spot.  I might try that.  Right now I’m just seeing if I’ll get used to it.

Overall, the device is unobtrusive.  Under tight fitting shirts, because my arms are fat, you can see where I am wearing the bugg, but it’s not obvious.  So far today I haven’t had anyone say anything in my office.

I haven’t “worked-out” since getting this little gem.  I’m pretty much giving myself two weeks to get used to watching what I eat and get used to the bugg, and then I’ll go from there.  I’m not saying I’m NOT going to work out.  I am just not making it a huge priority until next week.

So, there’s my initial impressions.  I’ll keep my feedback coming, just in case someone out there cares.

I was working today and there was a requirement for a third party integration on a visual force page. That requires a html form  which takes input and redirects to the required page by pressing submit button.

there were html input tags.. <input type="text" name="txtBox" />

I was jus thinking how to populate this textbox with the apex variable I have at the backend, I was about to try the javaScript method to populate this textbox with apex controller variable. But before that what I did was, I just called the variable name in the ‘value’ attribute of the input component this way:

<input type="text" name="txtBox" value="{!myVar}" />

this seems pretty simpler. it saved my lot of time by not getting into javaScript. I didnt know before that we can call apex controller variable for html components.

Feel free to ask any questions.

Formulas simply do not work in batch processing. I’m not talking about cross-object formulas either. And yes, yes, I’ve heard about retrieving all fields that are relevant to the formula in your SOQL statement. However….

Formula fields don’t work in batch processing. Don’t rely on them, work around them, or prepare for some hair pulling!

“CreatedById” and “CreatedDate”, two fields that very often we couldn’t do without for our triggers. However, the very nature of these fields in Salesforce.com can lead us to disaster.

Firstly these fields aren’t populated before a record is created in the Salesforce.com beefy databases. This has implications for “Before Insert” triggers. If you are relying on these fields in your program logic, you cannot use a Before Insert trigger. That is fair enough, but presents a problem for Salesforce.com in terms of load.

“Before Insert” triggers are “good” triggers. They are efficient, because if you are simply updating the object that is being inserted, your volume of DML statements (and thus database accesses) is reduced due to the fact that you can update the object before it ever gets to the database. The Created fields not being populated in the “Before Insert” trigger means you have to use “After Insert” triggers instead. This means you have to call an Update against the object your trigger is running against. Not an ideal situation for Salesforce in terms of their database load, nor indeed the developer who is hitting the brick wall of governor limits.

Secondly, these fields are non-createable and non-updateable. So what? Ask your testmethods. If your trigger logic needs the CreatedDate field to be a year ago for instance, you will have a problem getting your trigger to fire in your test methods. You will find yourself writing code just so your test method will run and you can deploy the damn code to production before your head is melted. How crazy is that?

The bottom line is, there are pitfalls that are unexpected when using the Created fields. Think twice about including them in your logic.

Currently the only EASY way to convert currency in an Apex trigger is to use a SOQL statements “convertCurrency” function. This is a very limited function, and it would seem counter intuitive from Salesforces perspective to force people down this road. I propose that Salesforce needs to change this to both reduce their own database load and give us developers a helping hand.

For the reason why this hurts Salesforce, consider this:

• I am writing an insert trigger to examine a currency field on my custom object “Transaction”
• If the amount of the Transaction is greater than EUR50, then stamp that Transaction with a value
• If I could use a “Before Insert” trigger I would just update the Transaction on the fly, i.e. update the object before it hits the database. Very efficient
• However I can’t do this because I need to convert my currency to Euro. I cannot use a SOQL statement to do this because the Transaction is not yet in the database.
• So I am forced to use an “After Insert” trigger, so that I can query the amount with my SOQL statement and use the convertCurrency to get the amount in Euro

So clearly it introduces a huge inefficiency within our triggers.

The solution in my mind is to have a suite of currency conversion functions as static method on Currency class. For instance, you could have:

• Currency.convert(Object.objectField, TargetCurrencyISOCode, Date)

where the Date is for dated exchange rates, and could be an optional parameter.  This alone would make multi-currency a breeze in triggers, rather than generating lots more dB read/writes than is necessary

It may be in the single digit temperatures, but that doesn’t mean we all put our bikes away and quit riding–  Join the team on New Years Day for a repeat of last year’s ride down Apex:

The end of the year is here and plenty of people who have been sitting on the fence when it comes to buying a home are looking. Some are just window shopping thinking that it is too difficult to get a loan. Erica McClenny, partner of ERealty, met with me recently to ask me a few questions.

Erica: The mortgage business has been in and out of the news over the past few years. Is getting a loan as difficult as the media says?

Me: Well our industry has gone thru a massive transformation. Four to five years ago qualifying for a home loan was like the old car ads. “Do you have a job? Do you have $99? You can own a home.” It is no longer like that and to be honest that’s a good thing. The risky investments that banks were willing to make are gone, but that doesn’t mean it is hard to get a loan. Lenders just want to make sure that someone has a stable job and good payment history. They also want to make sure that buyers have the ability to continue making their house payment.

Erica:  Does a buyer need to have a large down payment saved before they start to look at homes?

Me: No. That is the biggest misconception. There are still programs that require little to no money down.  Some programs, such as USDA, have property eligibility restrictions.  This is why it is important to call a Realtor or Mortgage Professional. They can help you identify these properties.

Erica:  Many people start browsing the Internet before they speak to a mortgage lender or Realtor. Do you think this is a good idea?

Me:  I wouldn’t necessarily say it is a bad idea, however it isn’t the best way. The best place to start is to get prequalified by a mortgage professional.  The reason why this is important is that it lets someone know the range of home prices they qualify for. A Realtor can refer someone to one or more lenders for prospective buyers to talk to.   

Erica:  Why should the Realtor and Lender be familiar with each other? Should a lender recommend a Realtor or vice versa?

Me:  Just like in any business it is important for people to form working relationships. Each must depend on each other in order to deliver a smooth transaction to their customer. With each deal the Realtor and Lender become more familiar with how each other works and build a level of trust. This trust is definitely important to the customer because buying a home can be stressful, but when the customer sees the Realtor and Lender working as a team, it definitely alleviates anxiety.

Everyone should have seen this but I’m going to link to it one more time as the man has come back.

One day- we shall all use Frameworkia…

Frameworkia

This genuinely cheers me up when having ‘one of those days’!

Domyślnie webowy dostęp do Oracle Database XE Server ograniczony jest do localhosta.

Aby umożliwić dostęp webowy do administracji dla zdalnych klientów, należy zalogować się do sqlplus’a jako użytkownik sys i wydać polecenie:

EXEC DBMS_XDB.SETLISTENERLOCALACCESS(FALSE);

I gotowe. Teraz możemy w przeglądarce wpisać adres serwera  (pamiętając o porcie 8080).

Np.

http://192.168.1.10:8080/apex

i przetestować połączenie (rys. 01).

rys. 01

Okay, I haven’t posted in a very long while…

So, apologies for the delay, but such is the result of falling off a cliff!

I have mentioned a few times that I was working on some ExtJSy stuff and some people have asked me when it will be ready. Quick answer is not very soon but I would welcome you to have a look at where I’m at so far.

I took great inspiration from Mark Lancaster (I do hope you’ve seen his site), and Matt Nolan at e-DBA. The route I took was to use a PL/SQL package to dynamically (probably strecthing the use of the word there…) create the ExtJS scripts based on the meta data from the APEX tables and a bit of DBMS_SQL, a few application processes and a couple of standalone JS files in the header of the page template. It’s all pretty clean and generic.

On the home page there’s a little portal kind of thing where the positions of things are based on the region positions, columns etc. If you find the page with some grids on it – it uses the alignment, default sort settings etc. from the APEX data as well. So you just enter the report query and settings as normal in APEX and the PL/SQL package picks all of that up to create the grid.

It’s just a starting point at the moment and something I hope to work on when in finer form.

So sorry for the wait and sorry it’s only just started but here’s the link…

Munky’s Zoo

Please e-mail me with suggestions for what to do next…

This is a cool little example of calling a REST web service with Apex. You enter your address and the Apex code fetches the geo coordinates from Yahoo! Maps. The service returns the data as XML.

If you want to run this demo in your own org, you will need to do the following:

1. Add a “Remote Site” (Setup -> Security Controls -> Remote Site Setting) with the URL: http://local.yahooapis.com
2. Add the XML DOM parser class to your org. It may already be present but if not you can download it from Code Share. Ron Hess’ class makes life much easier than using the standard XmlReader when dealing with XML files.

You can run this example on my Developer Site.

The Visualforce page above presents the user with address fields that they submit to the controller. The controller calls the REST web service and then displays the resulting geo coordinates to the user.

<apex:page controller="RestDemoController" tabStyle="Contact">
	<apex:sectionHeader title="Yahoo Maps Geocoding" subtitle="REST Demo"/>

     <apex:form >
     <apex:pageBlock >

          <apex:pageBlockButtons >
              <apex:commandButton action="{!submit}" value="Submit"
                   rerender="resultsPanel" status="status"/>
          </apex:pageBlockButtons>
          <apex:pageMessages />

          This example calls Yahoo! Map's geocoding REST service with the address
          you provide below.<p/>

          <apex:pageBlockSection >
               <apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
                    <apex:outputLabel for="address">Address</apex:outputLabel>
                    <apex:inputText id="address" value="{!address}"/>
               </apex:pageBlockSectionItem>
          </apex:pageBlockSection>

          <apex:pageBlockSection >
               <apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
                    <apex:outputLabel for="city">City</apex:outputLabel>
                    <apex:inputText id="city" value="{!city}"/>
               </apex:pageBlockSectionItem>
          </apex:pageBlockSection>

          <apex:pageBlockSection >
               <apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
                    <apex:outputLabel for="state">State</apex:outputLabel>
                    <apex:inputText id="state" value="{!state}"/>
               </apex:pageBlockSectionItem>
          </apex:pageBlockSection><br/>

          <apex:actionStatus id="status" startText="Fetching map..."/>
          <apex:outputPanel id="resultsPanel">
               <apex:outputText value="{!geoAddress}"/>
          </apex:outputPanel>

     </apex:pageBlock>
     </apex:form>

</apex:page>

The submit method below is invoked from the Visualforce page when the user clicks the submit button. It passes the address info to the getMap method which does the GET call to the REST service. We use the XmlDom class to parse through the results and construct a GeoResult object (from the inner class) and then present the info as a String to the user on the Visualforce page.

public class RestDemoController {

	public String geoAddress {get;set;}
	public String address {get;set;}
	public String city {get;set;}
	public String state {get;set;}

    // set the Yahoo Application Id
    private String appId {get;set { appId = 'DaqEkjjV34FCuqDUvZN92rQ9WWVQz58c0WHWo2hRGBuM310.qXefuBVwvJQaf1nnMCxSbg--'; } }

    // method called by the Visualforce page's submit button
    public PageReference submit() {
    	List<GeoResult> results = getMap(address,city,state);
    	geoAddress = results[0].toDisplayString();
    	return null;
    }

    // call the REST service with the address info
	public List<GeoResult> getMap(String street, String city, String state) {

		HttpRequest req = new HttpRequest();
		Http http = new Http();
		List<GeoResult> results = new List<GeoResult>();

		// set the request method
		req.setMethod('GET');

		// set the yahoo maps url with address
		String url = 'http://local.yahooapis.com/MapsService/V1/geocode?appid=' + appId
			+ '&street=' + EncodingUtil.urlEncode(street,'UTF-8')
			+ '&city=' + EncodingUtil.urlEncode(city,'UTF-8')
			+ '&state=' + EncodingUtil.urlEncode(state,'UTF-8');

		// add the endpoint to the request
		req.setEndpoint(url);

		// create the response object
		HTTPResponse resp = http.send(req);

		// create the xml doc that will contain the results of the REST operation
		XmlDom doc = new XmlDom(resp.getBody());

		// process the results
		XmlDom.Element[] elements = doc.getElementsByTagName('Result');
		if (elements != null) {
			for (XmlDom.Element element : elements)
				results.add(toGeoResult(element));
		}

		return results;
	}

	// utility method to convert the xml element to the inner class
	private GeoResult toGeoResult(XmlDom.Element element) {

		GeoResult geo = new GeoResult();
		geo.latitude = element.getValue('Latitude');
		geo.longitude = element.getValue('Longitude');
		geo.address = element.getValue('Address');
		geo.city = element.getValue('City');
		geo.state = element.getValue('State');
		geo.zip = element.getValue('Zip');
		return geo;
	}

	// inner class
	private class GeoResult {

		public String latitude;
		public String longitude;
		public String address;
		public String city;
		public String state;
		public String zip;
		public String toDisplayString() {
			return address + ', '
			+ city + ', '
			+ state + ', '
			+ zip + ' ['
			+ latitude + ', '
			+ longitude + ']';
		}

	}

}

12-03-09 Apex NC

WOW! What a Festival we had. 

Historic Downtown Apex rocked for 72 hours as events, gatherings, awards, films and VIP’s became vogue along Salem Street and in the Halle Cultural Arts Center.  We declare the Peak City Film Festival – Family Style a wonderful success.

Jerry Mathers and Charlie Gaddy have quickly become the famous faces of the Festival. These two dynamic individuals, stars in their own right, and who have both set numerous longevity records in the field of news and entertainment, brought their “everyman” appeal to each event they attended.  What a pair of true gentlemen.   What do you say about well known individuals who are also extremely friendly and giving? It is rare to see as we read the daily headlines.  It is simply refreshing to have celebrities who are not self-evolved. Down the road when the Festival commits to a Hall of Fame, the first two plaques are easy. And the wall space is well worth it.

It is exciting to announce that both Jerry and Charlie will again be the faces you will see in 2010 as the second Peak City Film Festival – Family Style comes back to the town of Apex on November 20. It is not that far away.

Although a famous face is critical to the longevity of this effort, John Demers of Studio in the Woods is quite honestly, the heart. His festival vision to bring edutainment and increased family values to this community was central to its success.  It continues to need his leadership and energy as year two fast approaches.

With the face smiling and the heart beating, the hands and feet of the festival this year were the senior committee and the simply awesome volunteers who worked BEYOND hard, long and cheap to make things happen. We put you away dirty and wet… And we love you so much for your efforts!

The life’s blood of our festival was the array of film producers whose efforts were the quite the show! You created awesome and wholesome entertainment that brought passion to the screen. Thank you so much.

The body of this year’s Festival is a no-brainer. It is you. The community came out in droves, selling out night one and bringing excitement to the historic street of Salem for three days!

Finally, the soul of the festival is never ending. It continues to be the generous and committed local, regional and national businesses who opened their up pocketbooks or gave “in-kind” donations in this crazy economy to make this unknown initial event an over- the- top success!

When you look deep and think about it, it is the soul that drives the opportunity. The Peak City Film Festival, the Rusty Bucket Kids Club, and the Studio in the Woods are more than committed to being in the business of creating business for our businesses. The Mission of the Festival as it evolves over time is exactly this. If we helped sell one more pizza, one more book, one more oil change, one more bottle of soda or one more dinner, we did it to keep our local community and our local businesses growing in the toughest of times. 

Merry Christmas from all of us in the Peak City Film Festival – Family Style, to you and your family, and a Happy New Year!! Godspeed in 2010! Success every day!

Hello Friends,

The holiday season is now among us and the Triangle area has tons of fun events!  Below is a helpful list of city links to find out what’s happening in your area:

Christmas Parades:

Apex (Saturday, December 5 at 5:00 PM)

Cary (Saturday, December 5 at 2:00 PM)

Chapel Hill (Saturday, December 12 at 10:00 AM)

Durham (Saturday, December 5 at 4:00 PM)

Fuquay-Varina (Sunday, December 6 at 3:00 PM)

Garner (Saturday, December 5 at 10:00 AM)

Holly Springs (Saturday, December 12 at 11:00 AM)

Knightdale (Saturday, December 5 at 2:00 PM)

Rolesville (Sunday, December 6 at 2:00 PM)

Wake Forest (Saturday, December 12 at 1:00 PM)

Zebulon (Sunday, December 6 at 2:00 PM)

Holiday Events & Happenings:

Apex Christmas Nativity Christmas Celebration

AT&T Raleigh Winterfest

Cary: Heart of the Holidays Celebration

City of Raleigh – Numerous Holiday Events!!!

Historic Oakwood Candlelight Tour

Holiday Festivities on Salem Street in Apex

Knightdale Christmas Tree Lighting

Light Up Main in Garner

Rolesville: The Lighting of the Town Christmas Tree

Zebulon: Children’s Gift Shop at Sycamore Crossing Gifts

Area Shopping Holiday Events:

Cary Towne Center

Christmas at North Hills

Crabtree Valley Mall

Streets at SouthPoint

Triangle Town Center

Volunteer Opportunities:

It’s never too late to start a new tradition. Here is a list of organizations looking for help this Holiday season.

Western Wake Crisis Ministry
Christmas Toy Program

Thank you cards for our Troops in Iraq
If you go to LetsSayThanks.com you can pick out a thank you card and Xerox will print it and it will be sent to a soldier that is currently serving in Iraq.

Toys for Tots 2009
Supported by the U.S. Marines, this program collects new un-wrapped toys to distribute to needy children while bringing a message of hope.

Angel Tree Toy Program
A program developed to bring Christmas gifts to children whose parents are in prison.

NC Food Bank
No food donation is too small. Click on link above for more information.

And from all of us at Linda Trevor and Company, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!