Dynamic Account Search

Dynamic Account Search

I had a business requierment that was involving coding a controller in combination wiht a Visualforce page.
The idea was to enable users to dynamically search for accounts. Looking for some ideas I found a really nice example from Jeff Douglas, you can find it here. So I took this structure and build my own page. The most interesting part of this code is the fact that you don’t event need to click a “search” button to start retriving results. As nice as that can be there are other things that I really like about this code. The simplicity and efficiency of this code are really outstanding, that is why I want to share this with you, all credit goes to Jeff of course … I’m just a messenger.

This is the controller:

[code lang="php"]
//AccountSearch controller 

public with sharing class AccountSearch {

  private String soql {get;set;}
  public List<Account> accounts {get;set;}

  public String sortDir
  {
    get  {
         if (sortDir == null)
           {
             sortDir = 'asc';
           }
             return sortDir;
         }
    set;
  }

  public String sortField
  {
    get  {
         if (sortField == null)
           {
             sortField = 'name';
           }
             return sortField;
         }
    set;
  }

  public String debugSoql {
    get { return soql + ' order by ' + sortField + ' ' + sortDir + ' limit 20'; }
    set;
  }

  public AccountSearch()
  {
    soql = 'select name, industry, shippingCountry from account where name != null';
    runQuery();
  }

  public void toggleSort()
  {
    sortDir = sortDir.equals('asc') ? 'desc' : 'asc';

    runQuery();
  }

  public void runQuery()
  {

    try {
      accounts = Database.query(soql + ' order by ' + sortField + ' ' + sortDir + ' limit 20');
      if(accounts.isEmpty())
      ApexPages.addMessage(new ApexPages.Message(ApexPages.Severity.INFO, 'Sorry, there are no results on your search criteria.')); 

    } catch (Exception e) {
      ApexPages.addMessage(new ApexPages.Message(ApexPages.Severity.ERROR, 'Something went wrong with your search!'));
    }

  }

  public PageReference runSearch()
  {

    String name = Apexpages.currentPage().getParameters().get('name');
    String industry = Apexpages.currentPage().getParameters().get('industry');
    String shippingCountry =Apexpages.currentPage().getParameters().get('shippingCountry');

    soql = 'select name, industry, shippingCountry from account where name != null';
    if (!name.equals(''))
      soql += ' and name LIKE \''+String.escapeSingleQuotes(name)+'%\'';
    if (!industry.equals(''))
    soql += ' and name LIKE \''+String.escapeSingleQuotes(industry)+'%\'';
    if (!shippingCountry.equals(''))
    soql += ' and shippingCountry LIKE \''+String.escapeSingleQuotes(shippingCountry)+'%\'';

    runQuery();

    return null;
  }  

}
[/code]

I did some changes to fix a few issues I had with this controller and now works like a charm. I like the way Jeff used properties to get the SOQL query sorted, real nice touch.

Here you can find the Visualforce page for this controller:

[code lang="java"]
//AccountSearch visualforce
<apex:page controller="AccountSearch" sidebar="false" showHeader="false">

  <apex:form >
  <apex:pageMessages id="errors" />

  <apex:pageBlock title="Account Search" mode="edit">

  <table width="100%" border="0">
  <tr>
    <td width="200" valign="top">

      <apex:pageBlock title="" mode="edit" id="criteria">

      <script type="text/javascript">
      function doSearch() {
        searchServer(
          document.getElementById("name").value,
          document.getElementById("industry").value,
          document.getElementById("shippingCountry").value);
      }
      </script>

      <apex:actionFunction name="searchServer" action="{!runSearch}" rerender="results,debug,errors">
          <apex:param name="name" value="" />
          <apex:param name="industry" value="" />
          <apex:param name="shippingCountry" value="" />

      </apex:actionFunction>

      <table cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">

      <tr>
        <td style="font-weight:bold;">Name<br/>
        <input type="text" id="name" onkeyup="doSearch();"/>
        </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td style="font-weight:bold;">Industry<br/>
        <input type="text" id="industry" onkeyup="doSearch();"/>
        </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td style="font-weight:bold;">Shipping Country<br/>
        <input type="text" id="shippingCountry" onkeyup="doSearch();"/>
        </td>
      </tr>
   </table>

      </apex:pageBlock>

    </td>
    <td valign="top">

    <apex:pageBlock mode="edit" id="results">

        <apex:pageBlockTable value="{!accounts}" var="account">

            <apex:column >
                <apex:facet name="header">
                    <apex:commandLink value="Name" action="{!toggleSort}" rerender="results,debug">
                        <apex:param name="sortField" value="name" assignTo="{!sortField}"/>
                    </apex:commandLink>
                </apex:facet>
                <apex:outputField value="{!account.name}"/>
            </apex:column>

            <apex:column >
                <apex:facet name="header">
                    <apex:commandLink value="Industry" action="{!toggleSort}" rerender="results,debug">
                        <apex:param name="sortField" value="Industry" assignTo="{!sortField}"/>
                    </apex:commandLink>
                </apex:facet>
                <apex:outputField value="{!account.industry}"/>
            </apex:column>

           <apex:column >
                <apex:facet name="header">
                    <apex:commandLink value="ShippingCountry" action="{!toggleSort}" rerender="results,debug">
                        <apex:param name="sortField" value="shippingCountry" assignTo="{!sortField}"/>
                    </apex:commandLink>
                </apex:facet>
                <apex:outputField value="{!account.shippingCountry}"/>
            </apex:column>
       </apex:pageBlockTable>
    </apex:pageBlock>

    </td>
  </tr>
  </table>

  <apex:pageBlock title="Extra Information" id="debug">
      <apex:outputText value="Please refer to this information if you can't find your account" />
  </apex:pageBlock>    

  </apex:pageBlock>

  </apex:form>

</apex:page>

[/code]

Real nice and simple…