What type of data for the field Phone in apex

Question

In a visualforce page I have an input for the user to enter his phone number :

<apex:input value="{!newPhone}" type="tel" StyleClass="small" html-placeholder="Téléphone *" required="true"/>

(And I have a save button that call the changeInfo() of the controller)

And I want to save that number in salesforce, so with the controller I do that :

public Id accountId{get;set;}
public String newPhone{get; set;}

public PageReference changeInfo(){
    Account account = [SELECT Name,Phone FROM Account WHERE Id=:accountId LIMIT 1];

    account.Phone = newPhone;
    try{
        update account;
    }
    catch(DMLException e){
        error = e.getMessage();
    }
    PageReference pageRef = new PageReference('/apex/myPage?AccountId=' + accountId);
    pageRef.setRedirect(true);
    return pageRef;
}

But When I click the save button, it redirect me to the right page, but the value is not saved in salesforce. Is it possible that my problem comes from the data type of newPhone ? Anyway any help is welcome, thank you !

Answer 1

Its possible that you are throwing, then catching, a DMLException, without fully handling it.

Consider the following:

<apex:form id="someForm">
    <apex:pageMessages />
    <apex:input value="{!newPhone}" type="tel" StyleClass="small" html-placeholder="Téléphone *" required="true" />
    <apex:commandButton action="{!changeInfo}" value="Update Phone" reRender="someForm" />
</apex:form>

This visualforce snippet assumes that you have set up your page to properly handle apexPageMessage's being added to the page, with a rerender attribute and a apex:pageMessages tag.

public Id accountId { get; set; }
public String newPhone { get; set; }

public PageReference changeInfo(){
    Account account = [SELECT Name, Phone FROM Account WHERE Id=:accountId LIMIT 1];

    account.Phone = newPhone;

    try {
        // update account; 
        throw new DMLException(); 
    } catch(DMLException e) { // Catches Exception, and logs error 
        error = e.getMessage(); // I assume your code does something with this error, used to handle failure cases, such as show a message 
    }

    // Any errors/messages are overridden because regardless of the error case, you switch the page 

    PageReference pageRef = new PageReference('/apex/myPage?AccountId=' + accountId);
    pageRef.setRedirect(true);

    return pageRef; 
} 

Id write something more like this, which doesn't redirect when an exception is thrown.

public Id accountId { get; set; }
public String newPhone { get; set; }

public PageReference changeInfo(){
    Account account = [SELECT Name, Phone FROM Account WHERE Id=:accountId LIMIT 1];

    account.Phone = newPhone;

    Boolean success = false; 

    try {
        update account; // Could throw a DMLException

        success = true; 
    } catch(DMLException e) { 
        // Adds error message to apex:PageMessages tag
        ApexPages.addMessage(e);
    }

    // Checks some condition, in this case, a boolean 
    if (success) {
        // Successful redirect 
        PageReference pageRef = new PageReference('/apex/myPage?AccountId=' + accountId);
        pageRef.setRedirect(true);

        return pageRef; 
    } else {
        // refresh page to show errors on failure 
        return null; 
    }
} 

This snippet may not be ideal, but should give you an idea where to start with handling error cases.