how to use two standard controllers in a single visual force page

Question

I need to save two objects that have parent child relationship , using a single visual force page. And also I need to pass values to the controller from the form both parent and child object's values. Is there any way to implement this?

Answer 1

It is not possible to define a VisualForce page with two entries in the standardController attribute. You can write an Apex class to handle this. It wouldn't have to be very complex.

As an example:

class ParentObjectExtension
{
  public ApexPages.StandardController parentController {get;set;}
  public ApexPages.StandardController childController {get;set;}
  public Parent_Object__c ParentObject {get;set;}
  public Child_Object__c ChildObject
  {
    get
    {
      if (ChildObject ==null)
      {
         ChildObject = new Child_Object__c();
      }
      return ChildObject;
    }
    set;
  }


  public ParentObjectExtension (ApexPages.StandardController ctrl)
  {
    parentController = ctrl;
    childController = new ApexPages.StandardController (ChildObject);
  }


  public PageReference SaveBoth()
  {

    PageReference pr = parentController.Save();
    if (pr != null) 
    {
      ChildObject.Parent__c = ParentObject.Id;
      if (childController.Save() == null) pr = null; 
    }

    return pr;
  }
}

If you VF has Parent_Object__c as the standardController and this class as an extension, you can reference fields from both Parent_Object__c (as {!Parent_Object__c.Field_Name__c} ) and Child_Object__c ( as {!ChildObject.Field_Name__c} )

And your save button needs to call the SaveBoth method not the standard Save.

This only works for brand new objects. You could use it to edit an existing Parent/Child if you modify the ChildObject getter to find the existing child based on the parent's Id.

NB I just typed this in here and haven't syntax checked or compiled, so I expect typos etc. It's really just to start you off.