When using a CASE() statement to find the last day of the month in Apex code, I’ve seen a lot of developers — both newbie & experienced coders alike — test for every month, when really all that needs to be tested are the shorter months, defaulting to 31 for the rest. This is a better Apex CASE statement that’s easier to read:
CASE(
MONTH( TODAY() ),
2, IF( MOD( YEAR( TODAY() ), 4 ) = 0, 29, 28 ),
4, 30,
6, 30,
9, 30,
11, 30,
31 //default for months 1,3,5,7,8,10,12
)
This example is half as many lines, and much easier to read & understand. Since I don’t think we’ll be changing the Gregorian calendar any time soon, this construct should be safe.
9/10/2013
Code
Force.com
9/2/2013
Photos
Instagram
Today is the 9th anniversary of this humble, little blog.
In its time online, it’s had two different domains, been served from four different hosts, had at least 15 theme changes that I can remember, and hundreds if not thousands of theme tweaks. Some themes I paid good money for (and would again), but most have been my own creation.
If you’re a regular reader, I’d just like to say thanks for the continued support. If you’ve just found the site, well then, thanks for sticking around.
Here’s to another 9 years…
8/19/2013
Life
I’ve been wrestling with this post for the last 6 months. Today, I have to finally put it out there.
I began developing Yasu as a replacement to Cocktail when the developer decided to start charging for it some 11 years ago, I think. Yasu was my first real foray into developing on the Mac, and I learned much from it. Ultimately what I taught myself lead to a radical position change at the day job, moving from product design into the development group. It seems I was better suited for writing code than I was drawing.
After that move, I wasn’t able to give Yasu the attention I really wanted to. But I still kept up with it as best I could, fixing little bugs along the way.
With the release of OS X Lion, I was faced with either rewriting the app from scratch, or patching it up just enough to make it still usable. Unfortunately, I had to opt for the latter since I just wasn’t able to find time in my schedule to start the whole project over.
Now, with OS X Maverick’s looming on the horizon, it’s become pretty clear that the usefulness of Yasu has reached its end. There are so many other tools that do the same job just as well or better, plus half of the options in Yasu are now handled natively by Mac OS X. And, with all the other commitments in my life, Yasu would have to take a back seat to them all.
So with that, I’ve decided to stop charging for Yasu and make it free again. If you’ve come here looking for the app, you can find it here now: http://yasuapp.com. There’s a free code you can use to register the app on that page too.
I’d like to thank the many people who’ve been so supportive over the years. It was their encouragement that gave me the kick in the pants at just the right moments when I was ready to throw in the towel. I’ve also made many friends that I would have never known because of Yasu. I’m grateful for that opportunity.
Here’s to the next chapter in life, whatever that may hold.
6/26/2013
Life
If you access Salesforce.com using an iPad running iOS 6, here’s something you should be looking out for. If you don’t realize it’s happening, you could be badly tainting your data.
When selecting values from a multi-value picklist editing Salesforce.com records via browser on an iPad 2 or 3 running iOS 6, two values will automatically be selected when you have only selected one.
No matter which value you select in the list, the value just before it will also be selected. You won’t notice this when first selecting the value, but once you tap “Done” in the popup dialog, and tap back in to it, you’ll see two values selected.
I’ve contacted Salesforce Support, and they are aware of the issue, but do not have a solution for it yet. Their recommendation was to promote it on the Idea Exchange. Not really a solution to a known bug if you ask me.
So, be aware of this issue if your users are accessing Salesforce.com via iPad running iOS 6. It could help make your admin’s life a little easier.
Update: This is NOT a Salesforce bug. Rather, it’s an iOS 6 bug which has been thoroughly documented by Ryan Seddon.
Update 2: Even though this is an Apple iOS 6 bug, and even though Mobile Safari is not an “officially” supported browser by Salesforce, I received a phone call from Tier 3 support this morning letting me know it will be fixed in the Spring ’13 release due out in the next few weeks.
1/10/2013
Apple, Salesforce.com
Bug, iOS 6, iPad