Whenever I have to run code on the database, change posts, or terms or what have you, I am running it on a custom page template.
Since this has been working for me up to know, I didn’t think about it much. But I need to delete a ton of terms now from a custom taxonomy and I can’t do it on the test page very effectively. Meaning I get 504 gateway errors all the time, because the code takes too long to run, and deletes only a part of the terms.
So I am wondering, if I need to run custom code to change a lot of data, what is the most efficient method to use?
Many people use a plugin named Code Snippets for this. Otherwise it's often more efficient to use direct SQL Queries using phpMyAdmin for example.
Related
My company hired an agency to create an MQL salesforce object. Its constructed from an Apex class with various triggers.
We no longer have a need for it, and as the standing saleforce admin, there is none at the company who knows Apex. I'm taking classes to learn it, but wanted to check in and see how I can deprecate the object from salesforce by archiving/deleting (or even just commenting out the code) to push the update to production.
Does anyone have insight into how to go about doing this? All of the courses I've taken are basic understanding of Apex and how to write small triggers, classes and queries. The agency who built the class left 0 documentation on its code.
You can't write code in production so whatever you'll try to do - will have to be done in sandbox, tested and then deployed.
There's a way to do a "destructive deployment" and really delete it but you'll need programming tools (VSCode, Eclipse IDE or Ant + Migration Tool). It's bit advanced topic, I'd suggest you hire a dev ;) or try to just comment them out.
In sandbox you can comment out the body (bodies?) of triggers and classes. You shouldn't kill whole file, leave some empty skeletons like
public with sharing class MqlGenerator{
/* kill everything
*/
}
trigger MqlTrigger on MQL__c (after insert){
/* kill everything
*/
}
Of course if there's trigger on Account and it does 10 things, only 2 of them relate to MQL then don't comment everything out ;) It'll be bit of trial and error for you, depends how clean the code is.
You will have to touch triggers, normal classes and likely unit tests too because if they did decent job - there will be tests that verify these triggers do something and now these tests will start to fail.
Add the files to changeset as you go (you do changesets, right? Doesn't sound like you deploy with Git+SFDX for example). From time to time run Apex Classes -> Compile all classes and run unit tests. Some manual testing wouldn't hurt too. If you are unsure what's left you can click on MQL's fields, there's "Where is this used?" button. Or even try clicking delete & repeating until it succeeds ;)
After you deploy this changeset...
If the MQL__c has no triggers (for example it is created in Account updates but itself doesn't have triggers), you might actually be able to delete the object. If there are related triggers, workflows etc SF will stop you. The only way to really delete it would be to run this destructive deploy. It's possible without installing anything, use the link I included and for example workbench would let you make a deployment. But it's bit "pro", if you're unsure start with commenting stuff out and maybe leave the empty skeleton until you're more comfortable. You can always hide the object's Tab, remove right to Read the object and it'll disappear from listviews, reports... it'll be an eyesore only for sysadmins.
If object has to stay around but the data storage is significant you could try truncating the object. If it gives you trouble - Data Loader, export all records (just IDs), then delete. Maybe even with hard delete option so you skip recycle bin.
Is there any way to auto-generate Swagger documentation (or similar) for a Nancy service?
I found Nancy.Swagger, but there's no information on how to use it and the demo application doesn't seem to demonstrate generating documentation (if it does, it's not obvious).
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
In my current project I've been looking a lot into this problem. I used both nancy.swagger and nancy.swagger.attributes.
I quickly discarded Nancy.swagger, because for me personally it doesn't sound right that you have to create a pure documentation class for each nancy module. The attributes solution was a bit "cleaner" - at least codebase and documentation were in one place. But very fast this became unmaintainable. Module code is unreadable because of many attributes. Nothing is generated automatically: you have to put path, all parameters, even http method as an attribute. This is a huge effort duplication. Problems came very fast, a few examples:
I changed POST to PUT in Nancy and forgot to update [Method] attribute.
I added a parameter but not the attribute for it.
I changed parameter from path to query and didn't update the attribute.
It's too easy to forget to update the attributes (let alone documentation module solution), which leads to discrepancies between your documentation and actual code base. Our UI team is in another country and they had some trouble using the APIs because docu just wasn't up-to-date.
My solution? Don't mix code and documentation. Generating docu from code (like Swashbuckle does) IS ok, but actually writing docu in code and try to dublicate the code in docu is NOT. It's not better than writing it in a Word document for your clients.
If you want Swagger docu, just do it the Swagger way.
- Spend some time with Swagger.Editor and really author your API in
YAML. It looks all-text and hard, but once you get used to it, it's
not.
- Spend some time with Swagger.Codegen and adapt it (it already does a fair job for generating Nancy server code and with a few
adjustments to moustache templates it was just what I needed).
- Automate your process: write a couple of batches to generate your modules and models from yaml and copy them to your repository.
Benefits? Quite a few:
-
Your YAML definition is now the single truth of your REST contract.
If somewhere something is defferent, it's wrong.
Nancy server code is auto-generated
Client code-bases are auto-generated (in our case it's android, ios and angular)
So whenever I change something in REST contract, all codebases are regenerated and added to projects in one batch. I just have to tell the teams something was updated. They don't have to look through some documents and search for it. They just have their code regenerated and probably see some compile errors, in case of breaking changes.
Do I still use nancy.swagger(.annotations)?
Yes, I do use it in another project, which has just one endpoint with a couple of methods. They don't change often. It's not worth the effort to set up everything, I have my swagger docu fast up and running. But if your project is big, API is changing, and you have multiple code-bases depending on your API, my advice is to invest some time into a real swagger setup.
I am quoting the author answer here from https://github.com/khellang/Nancy.Swagger/issues/59
The installation should be really simple, just pull down the NuGet package, add metadata modules to describe your routes, and hit /api-docs. That should get you the JSON. If you want to add swagger-ui as well, you have to add that manually right now.
No. Not in an automated. https://github.com/yahehe/Nancy.Swagger needs lots of manually created metadata.
There is a nice article here: http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/generating-api-document-in-nancy-using-swagger/
Looks like you still have to add swagger-ui separately.
I am unsure if this is a bug, by design (though I can't see the benefit), or if I am just being dimwitted.
Using Google App Engine development server, v1.9.8, I can only add a datastore entity if another of the same kind already exists. Otherwise the drop-down physically does not show the entity kind.
Further, even on an entity kind that does exist, I can only change attributes (or create them if it's new) if that attribute is not null on at least one of the other existing entities of that kind.
This is annoying, since in order to test things I have to first do:
entityKind(every=Possible, attribute=Set, to=Something, even=If,
i=Dont, yet=Need).put()
Refresh, and then remember to delete this line before refreshing again to avoid duplicating the entry in datastore.
Note though, that if I happen to be testing with only entities that do not use every attribute, I have to keep this dummy one just in case I want the others later.
I must, surely, be missing something here? I can't believe there isn't a way to just create datastore entities without hacking around it like this?
You are talking about creating entities manually using a Dev server. Over the past 4 years of using GAE I wished once or twice that this would be possible, but I never needed this feature. You create entities in your code, and you debug your code if something does not work.
You can (and should) write unit tests to test your code. A proper unit test creates an entity, saves it, reads it, verifies that all the properties are correct, deletes it, verifies that it was deleted. There is no code to cut and paste (or comment/uncomment), and there are no test entities left after testing is completed.
Your mistake is in thinking of the web console as a part of your workflow. It is absolutely not, and not intended to be. It is a vaguely hacked-together tool that allows you to do some basic operations on your data, and nothing else.
Interact with the datastore via code, and leave the web console for simple verifications.
Thanks in advance for any help offered and patience for my current web-coding experience.
Background:
I'm currently attempting to develop an web based application for my family's business. There is a current version of this system I have developed in C#, however I want to get the system web-based and in the process learn cakephp and the MVC pattern.
Current problem:
I'm currently stuck in a controller that's supposed to take care of a PurchaseTicket. This ticket will have an associated customer, line items, totals etc. I've been trying to develop a basic 'add()' function to the controller however I'm having trouble with the following:
I'm creating a view with everything on it: a button for searching customer, a button to add line items, and a save button. Since I'm used to developing desktop applications, I'm thinking that I might be trying to transfer the same logic to web-based. Is this something that would be recommended or do'able?
I'm running into basic problems like 'searching customer'. From the New Ticket page I'm redirecting to the customer controller, searching and then putting result in session variable or posting it back, but as I continue my process with the rest of the required information, I'm ending up with a bit of "spaghetti" code. Should I do a multi part form? If I do I break the visual design of the application.
Right now I ended up instantiating my PurchaseTicket model and putting it in a session variable. I did this to save intermediate data however I'm not sure if instantiating a Model is conforming to cakephp standards or MVC pattern.
I apologize for the length, this is my first post as a member.
Thanks!
Welcome to Stack Overflow!
So it sounds like there's a few questions, all with pretty open-ended answers. I don't know if this will end up an answer as such, but it's more information than I could put in a comment, so here I go:
First and foremost, if you haven't already, I'd recommend doing the CakePHP Blog Tutorial to get familiar with Cake, before diving straight into a conversion of your existing desktop app.
Second, get familiar with CakePHP's bake console. It will save you a LOT of time if you use it to get started on the web version of your app.
I can't stress how important it is to get a decent grasp of MVC and CakePHP on a small project before trying to tackle something substantial.
Third, the UI for web apps is definitely different to desktop apps. In the case of CakePHP, nothing is 'running' permanently on the server. The entire CakePHP framework gets instantiated, and dies, with every single page request to the server. That can be a tricky concept when transitioning from desktop apps, where everything is stored in memory, and instances of objects can exist for as long as you want them to. With desktop apps, it's easier to have a user go and do another task (like searching for a customer), and then send the result back to the calling object, the instance of which will still exist. As you've found out, if you try and mimic this functionality in a web app by storing too much information in sessions, you'll quickly end up with spaghetti code.
You can use AJAX (google it if you don't already know about it) to update parts of a page only, and get a more streamlined UI, which it sounds like something you'll be needing to do. To get a general idea of the possibilities, you might want to take a look at Bamboo Invoice. It's not built with CakePHP, but it's built with CodeIgniter, which is another open source PHP MVC framework. It sounds like Bamboo Invoice has quite a few similar functionalities to what you're describing (an Invoice has line items, totals, a customer, etc), so it might help you to get an idea of how you should structure your interface - and if you want to dig into the source code, how you can achieve some of the things you want to do.
Bamboo Invoice uses Ajax to give the app a feel of 'one view with everything on it', which it sounds like you want.
Fourth, regarding the specific case of your Customer Search situation, storing stuff in a session variable probably isn't the way to go. You may well want to use an autocomplete field, which sends an Ajax request to server after each time a character is entered in the field, and displays the list list of suggestions / matching customers that the server sends back. See an example here: http://jqueryui.com/autocomplete/. Implementing an autocomplete isn't totally straight forward, but there should be plenty of examples and tutorials all over the web.
Lastly, I obviously don't know what your business does, but have you looked into existing software that might work for you, before building your own? There's a lot of great, flexible web-based solutions, at very reasonable prices, for a LOT of the common tasks that businesses have. There might be something that gives you great results for much less time and money than it costs to build your own solution.
Either way, good luck, and enjoy CakePHP!
I'm stumped and need some ideas on how to do this or even whether it can be done at all.
I have a client who would like to build a website tailored to English-speaking travelers in a specific country (Thailand, in this case). The different modes of transportation (bus & train) have good web sites for providing their respective information. And both are very static in terms of the data they present (the schedules rarely change). Here's one of the sites I would need to get info from: train schedules The client wants to provide users the ability to search for a beginning and end location and determine, using the external website's information, how they can best get there, being provided a route with schedule times for the different modes of chosen transport.
Now, in my limited experience, I would think the way to do that would be to retrieve the original schedule info from the external site's server (via API or some other means) and retain the info in a database, which can be queried as needed. Our first thought was to contact the respective authorities to determine how/if this can be done, but this has proven to be problematic due to the language barrier, mainly.
My client suggested what is basically "screen scraping", but that sounds like it would be complicated at best, downloading the web page(s) and filtering through the HTML for relevant/necessary data to put into the database. My worry is that the info on these mainly static sites is so static, that the data isn't even kept in a database to build the page and the web page itself is updated (hard-coded) when something changes.
I could really use some help and suggestions here. Thanks!
Screen scraping is always problematic IMO as you are at the mercy of the person who wrote the page. If the content is static, then I think it would be easier to copy the data manually to your database. If you wanted to keep up to date with changes, you could then snapshot the page when you transcribe the info and run a job to periodically check whether the page has changed from the snapshot. When it does, it sends an email for you to update it.
The above method could also be used in conjunction with some sort of screen scaper which could fall back to a manual process if the page changes too drastically.
Ultimately, it is a case of how much effort (cost) is your client willing to bear for accuracy
I have done this for the following site: http://www.buscatchers.com/ so it's definitely more than doable! A key feature of a web scraping solution for travel sites is that it must send you emails if anything went wrong during the scraping process. On the site, I use a two day window so that I have two days to fix the code if the design changes. Only once or twice have I had to change my code, and it's very easy to do.
As for some examples. There is some simplified source code here: http://www.buscatchers.com/about/guide. The full source code for the project is here: https://github.com/nicodjimenez/bus_catchers. This should give you some ideas on how to get started.
I can tell that the data is dynamic, it's to well structured. It's not hard for someone who is familiar with xpath to scrape this site.