Summary

This chapter introduced you to the world of Apex—the syntax, constructs, and creation of Apex code. You learned how to work with the Force Platform IDE to interactively create and run Apex code, as well as adding Apex classes to your Force Platform projects.

You also learned why and how to add test methods to your code, insuring predictable results over time, even as the capabilities of the Force Platform grow with new releases.

Up to this point, you have been working with Apex classes since these classes do not need to interact with data in your Force Platform organization. The authors took this approach so you could rapidly learn the essentials of Apex in general. But in the real world, the great power and most frequent use of Apex is in conjunction with that Force Platform data. The next chapter covers the many facets of using of Apex with data.