Visual Force Blows

EDIT/FORWARD: I got called out in a posting at http://www.tehnrd.com/if-visualforce-sucks-this-blows/comment-page-1/#comment-353 that pretty much line for line tore my post apart. So it is with great humility that I retract a majority of my negative statements about the following languages. I still do not like them, however I will admit they are both valid and well constructed and any difficulties I have are due to my own failings as a programmer and human being. This post is kept here now for historical and reference purposes, the content has not been modified. Also, I really do not wish any physical to harm to any of the developers of Apex/Visual force, it was more a hyperbole/figure of speech.

Okay, so you have probably never heard of this, but I am having to work with a language called Visual Force, yet another proprietary more than likely soon to be extinct language introduced by the over engineering code monkeys at Salesforce.

It is a language that is supposed to allow you to create custom content for their CRM platform which allows you to do anything from create new custom field types, to build whole websites for your customers or whatever. Sounds great in theory, however in reality it makes you want to stab yourself. A lot.

Problem is, it uses what is called MVC (Model View Controller, or some shit like that) which divides your logic code, from your design code (oh my god, they invented the idea of functions that can be called, how fucking astounding). Seems like a solid plan, cause your design team and your programming team get to work separately and not step all over each others code. Problem is, I am the design team, and the coding team. That means I get to deal with the whole project from the ground up and deal with all the over engineered bs.

For example, I am trying to create a simple dynamic menu system. The objects for the menu are pulled from Salesforce (which is basically just a fancy database) and looped over to create the links. The objects are simple (objects are just Salesforce’s name for tables). Seems easy right? Just query for the objects, loop over them and create links out of the data on said objects. Hell in Cold Fusion I could do this in 6 lines (minus formatting)

<cfquery name=”getlinks” datasource=”whatever”>
Select location,name from links
</cfquery>

<cfloop query=”getlinks”>
<a href=”#getlinks.location#”>#getlinks.name#</a>
</cfloop>

Look at that. Short and sweet. Grab the data, loop over it, create links. Now lets look at the Apex/Visual Force approach (apex is what they call the underlying language that powers visual force, imagine Java and C# getting wasted and having a kid. Apex is the result of their drunken grope fest. Its ugly, and embarrassing and mentally retarded.).

Now to be fair, I don’t even have a working sample yet, even though I’ve been working on this system for 2 days now. The following is the implementation in apex, of the above idea of getting data and looping to build links.

public with sharing class WebsiteMenu
{

public class menuItem
{
public List<menuItem> subMenu { get; set; }
public String Label { get; set; }
public String Action { get; set; }

public menuItem(String newLabel, String newAction) {
subMenu = new List<menuItem>();
Label = newLabel;
Action = newAction;
}

}

public List<menuItem> getMenuItems() {
Map<Id,menuItem> itemMap = new Map<Id,menuItem>();

List<menuItem> mainMenu = new List<menuItem>();

// Query all menu items.
Map<id,WebSite_Data__c> menuMap = new Map<id,WebSite_Data__c>(
[select id,Sub_Menu__c,Page_Title__c,Action__c from WebSite_Data__c]);

// Build the menu; all top-level items first.
for(WebSite_Data__c item:menuMap.values()) {
if(item.Sub_Menu__c==null) {
itemMap.put(item.id,new menuItem(item.Page_Title__c,item.Action__c));
mainMenu.add(itemMap.get(item.id));
}
}

// Remove those items from future iterations.
menuMap.keySet().removeAll(itemMap.keyset());

// Recursively add items to the menu.
while(!menuMap.isEmpty()) {
for(WebSite_Data__c item:menuMap.values()) {
if(itemMap.containsKey(item.Sub_Menu__c)) {
itemMap.put(item.id,new menuItem(item.Page_Title__c,item.Action__c));
itemMap.get(item.Sub_Menu__c).subMenu.add(itemMap.get(item.id));
}
}
// And remove them from future iterations.
menuMap.keySet().removeAll(itemMap.keySet());
}

// Return the constructed menu.
return mainMenu;
}
}

——————————————————————————————————

<!-- custom component 'menuItem' -->
<apex:component selfClosing="true">
  <apex:parameter type="theController.menuItem" name="item" required="true" />
  <apex:outputLink value="{!item.Action}">{!item.Label}
  </apex:outputLink>
  <apex:repeat value="{!item.subMenu}" var="subItem">
    <c:menuItem item="{!subItem}" />
  </apex:repeat>
</apex:component>

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<!-- the main page -->
<apex:page controller="theController">
  <apex:repeat value="{!menuItems}" var="menuItem">
    <c:menuItem item="{!menuItem}" />
  </apex:repeat>
</apex:page>

Look at all that shit. I have to write my initial template page, then right the back end apex code
to create the menu, the write a component that invokes that code, and then write a function that
invokes the component and put that back in the original page. How much fucking overkill bullshit is that.

And guess what, that above code won’t even display the menu anywhere. I still have to nest that bottom piece of
code in whatever template I want it to show up on. And even after all that, this thing still doesn’t even work.
Don’t even get me started on testing classes either for the above code. I’ll save that rant for another day.

If it was possible to hate a language to death, they Apex and Visualforce have died in a fire long ago. Oh yeah, and for those reading hopeful
to get some help with this stuff, I’ll post again when I get functional code.