Custom Classes & Pages: Build Your Own Screens, Backed by Governed Code

🌱 Beginner: the three verbs every script uses

Before any of the bigger builds below, every Custom Class leans on the same three data operations — all of them permission-checked, org-isolated, and impossible to bypass with raw SQL (there isn't any).

1 Intermediate: build the account → contacts search screen

You'll build exactly the screen Ravi asked for in the About tab: type part of an account name, see every contact under every matching account.

2 Advanced: process thousands of records with Batch Mode

Some jobs are too big for one 15-second run — like backfilling a field across every Lead your company has ever created. Batch Mode splits the work into chunks and runs them automatically, one after another, until every record has been through the script.

3 Pro: run a batch script automatically, every day

Turn the manual "Run as Batch" click from the previous step into a standing job that fires on its own — no one has to remember to start it.

4 Syntax reference: declaring a variable, building a class, calling it

Every Custom Class is Groovy — close to Java, forgiving about types. Here's the three things you'll write over and over.

class LeadService {
    def getSummary(params) {
        def lead = Platform.getRecord('lead', params.leadId)
        return [ name: lead.first_name + ' ' + lead.last_name, status: lead.status ]
    }
}

5 Typed model classes — a real class with getters and setters

A method doesn't have to return a plain list of loose key/value pairs. It can build and return a list of a proper model class you define yourself, with real fields and real get/set methods — closer to how you'd shape data in a typed language.

class DogBreeds {
    def getBreeds(params) {
        def list = []
        def b = new Breed()
        b.setBreedName('Husky')
        b.setSubBreeds(['sub-breed'])
        list.add(b)
        return [ breeds: list ]
    }
}

class Breed {
    private String breedName
    private List subBreeds
    String getBreedName() { return breedName }
    void setBreedName(String v) { this.breedName = v }
    List getSubBreeds() { return subBreeds }
    void setSubBreeds(List v) { this.subBreeds = v }
    String getSubBreedsText() { return subBreeds ? subBreeds.join(', ') : '-' }  // computed
}

6 Call a third-party web service (Named Credentials)

A Class can reach out to an external API — a shipping-rate lookup, a Slack post, a firmographic enrichment service — but it never sees a raw URL or a secret. Both live in a Named Credential, resolved automatically at call time.

7 Render results with an LWC-style template

A Custom Page doesn't need hand-written DOM code to show a list or a value — its built-in template engine uses the same directive names as a Salesforce Lightning Web Component template, so if you already know LWC, you already know this.

<div id="result">Loading...</div>
<template id="tpl">
  <table>
    <template for:each={breeds} for:item="breed">
      <tr key={breed.breedName}><td>{breed.breedName}</td><td>{breed.subBreedsText}</td></tr>
    </template>
  </table>
  <template if:false={breeds}><p>No breeds found.</p></template>
</template>
<script>
  SmartLiteComponent.renderClass('DogBreeds', 'getBreeds', {}, '#result', '#tpl');
</script>