Developer Kickstart Week 2: Flow Control, Loops, and Collections

This project is part of the Developer Kickstart Week 2 curriculum at Cloud Code Academy. It is designed to help beginner Salesforce developers learn and practice flow control, loops, and collections in the Apex programming language.

Goals of the Practice

Through this practice project, you will gain foundational knowledge about:

• Flow control mechanisms in Apex, such as if-else statements and switch statements, to control the execution path based on conditions.
• Looping constructs in Apex, such as for loops, while loops, and do-while loops, to iterate over a set of statements or a collection of elements.
• Working with collections in Apex, including lists, sets, and maps, to store and manipulate data efficiently.

By mastering flow control, loops, and collections, you will enhance your ability to write flexible and powerful Apex code. These concepts are fundamental to building robust and efficient solutions in Salesforce.

Setup

Video Overview

To get started, you'll need a Salesforce Trailhead Playground. If you don't have one, you can create it for free from any Trailhead module.

After you've set up your Trailhead Playground:

1. Install Visual Studio Code from here.
2. Install Salesforce Extension Pack in Visual Studio Code. This can be done by searching 'Salesforce Extension Pack' in the Extensions view in VS Code and clicking Install.
3. Authorize your Trailhead Playground in Visual Studio Code. Press Ctrl + Shift + P to open the command palette and type 'SFDX: Authorize an Org', then press Enter. Follow the steps in the browser to log in to your Playground, then return to VS Code.
4. Deploy the Apex Class by right clicking on the VariablesDatatypesOperators and VariablesDatatypesOperatorsTest file a using the option SFDX: Deploy Source to Org.

Running the Test Classes

To run the test classes:

1. Open the command palette with Ctrl + Shift + P.
2. Type 'SFDX: Invoke Apex Tests...', and press Enter.
3. In the 'Select Test Class' input, select the test class you want to run and press Enter.
4. The test results will appear in the Output panel at the bottom of the screen. You can switch to the 'Test' tab in this panel to see a summary of the test run.

Resources

If you get stuck at any point, here are some resources that might help:

• Apex Developer Guide
• Salesforce Stack Exchange
• Visual Studio Code Documentation
• Salesforce Extensions for Visual Studio Code

And remember, programming is often about solving problems, so don't be afraid to use search engines to find answers to your questions.

Good luck with your learning journey in Salesforce development!