RemoteAction Apex methods have helped make Visualforce pages more responsive by allowing us to use more JavaScript and still connect easily to our Apex business logic. But with this power comes the brittleness of JavaScript's untyped nature and the disconnect between JavaScript and Apex methods. The errors caused by these issues are runtime errors, which can slow development down. To catch these errors at compile time, the Tooling API can be used to generate TypeScript proxies for RemoteActions. Join us to learn what TypeScript is, how to use it in Visualforce, and see concrete examples of how to generate proxies for Apex RemoteActions.

1. Making Visualforce RemoteActions
Bulletproof with TypeScript
​ Simon Goodyear
​ Beaufort 12
​ @simongoodyear
​

2. Simon Goodyear
Co-Founder, Beaufort 12

3. Demo
The Problem

4. Root Cause Analysis
​ JavaScript is not metadata aware

5. Making JavaScript Metadata Aware
What we need Where we get it
Method Signatures Tooling API
Custom Apex Types Tooling API
SObjects Standard API

6. Making JavaScript Metadata Aware
​ JavaScript is loosely typed

7. What is TypeScript?
​ “TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript”
​ “…a symantic subset of JavaScript; the sensical subset” – Anders Hejlsberg
​ Aimed at improving the development experience for JavaScript

8. What is TypeScript?
​ Strongly typed. Tools perform type inference.
​ Modules, Classes & Interfaces
​ 4 primitives: string, number, boolean, any
​ TypeScriptLang.org

9. Demo
Introduction to TypeScript

10. Joining the Dots
​ Represent metadata as classes in TypeScript
• We need tools to do this
​ We no longer write JavaScript
• TypeScript only now
​ TypeScript is compiled before deployment
• And thus type checked

11. Demo
Joining the dots

12. Where Next?
​ Better flow for developers
• Create a grunt task
• Automatically generate d.ts files on metadata changes
​ Improved support of metadata
• Inner classes
• Namespace support
​ Integration with continuous integration tools
​ Whatever else you can imagine

13. 3 Simple Points
​ JavaScript is not aware of the Salesforce metadata
​ All the metadata is exposed via the Tooling and Standard APIs
​ We can make TypeScript aware of the Salesforce metadata

14. Resources
​ typescriptlang.org
​ blogs.msdn.com/b/typescript
​ channel9.msdn.com/Tags/typescript
​ definitelytyped.org
​ github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript-Sublime-Plugin

15. Thank you