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Salesforce Design Patterns: Best Practices for Scalable Development

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Salesforce Design Patterns

Introduction to Salesforce Design Patterns

In modern enterprise development, code quality, scalability, and maintainability are non-negotiable. Salesforce design patterns play a crucial role in helping developers write robust and efficient Apex code that aligns with Salesforce best practices. These patterns offer reusable solutions to common programming challenges, ensuring consistency across projects and teams.

Whether you’re an experienced Salesforce developer or just starting your journey, understanding and applying these design patterns will help you write clean, modular, and high-performance code.

What are Salesforce Design Patterns?

Salesforce design patterns are proven coding templates or best practices tailored specifically for the Salesforce ecosystem. They help solve recurring problems in areas like trigger handling, data manipulation, error logging, and UI logic separation. These patterns are inspired by general software engineering principles but customized to fit the multi-tenant nature of Salesforce.

Benefits of Using Design Patterns in Salesforce

  • Improved code readability and reuse

  • Enhanced system scalability and performance

  • Easier debugging and error handling

  • Consistent development practices across teams

  • Reduced risk of hitting governor limits

Common Salesforce Design Patterns

1. Trigger Pattern

The Trigger Pattern centralizes logic from multiple triggers into a single handler class. This avoids the problem of having multiple triggers on the same object and ensures easier debugging and testing.

Structure:

  • One trigger per object

  • Handler class manages logic

  • Supports before and after events separately

2. Service Layer Pattern

The Service Layer separates business logic from the controller or trigger logic. This improves maintainability and simplifies unit testing.

Best Used For:

  • Apex classes invoked from Lightning components, LWC, or triggers

  • Supporting complex business processes

3. Factory Pattern

The Factory Pattern is used to instantiate objects without exposing the creation logic. This is useful when you have multiple implementations of an interface and need to decide which one to use dynamically.

Example Use Case:
Different discount calculation logic for different account types.

4. Singleton Pattern

The Singleton Pattern ensures that a class has only one instance and provides a global point of access to it. In Salesforce, this can help reduce SOQL/DML calls.

Example Use Case:
Fetching user settings or configuration data once per transaction.

5. Strategy Pattern

This pattern enables a class to change its behavior at runtime. In Salesforce, it’s useful when you have multiple algorithms for a task and want to choose one dynamically.

Example Use Case:
Multiple lead assignment strategies based on region or product.

When to Use Salesforce Design Patterns

Use Salesforce design patterns when:

  • You’re building large or scalable enterprise solutions

  • Code needs to be reused across multiple components

  • You want to enforce clear separation of concerns

  • You need robust unit testing with mockable components

Best Practices for Implementing Design Patterns in Apex

  • Keep your classes modular and focused (Single Responsibility Principle)

  • Always write unit tests for each pattern implementation

  • Leverage Custom Metadata Types for configuration-driven patterns

  • Use Dependency Injection where possible to make your code testable

  • Ensure patterns don’t lead to over-engineering – keep it simple and purposeful

Real-World Example: Trigger Pattern Implementation

apex
trigger AccountTrigger on Account (before insert, before update) {
AccountTriggerHandler.handle(Trigger.new, Trigger.oldMap);
}public class AccountTriggerHandler {
public static void handle(List<Account> newList, Map<Id, Account> oldMap) {
if(Trigger.isBefore && Trigger.isInsert){
AccountService.validateAccounts(newList);
}
}
}public class AccountService {
public static void validateAccounts(List<Account> accounts) {
for(Account acc : accounts){
if(String.isBlank(acc.Name)){
acc.addError(‘Account Name cannot be blank’);
}
}
}
}

FAQs about Salesforce Design Patterns

Q1. Are Salesforce design patterns mandatory to follow?

No, but they are strongly recommended for large-scale applications to ensure performance and maintainability.

Q2. Do these patterns apply only to Apex?

While many patterns apply to Apex, similar principles can be used in Lightning Components, LWC, Flows, and even integration services.

Q3. How do I decide which design pattern to use?

Evaluate the problem at hand. Patterns should simplify development, not overcomplicate it. Use them when they make the code more modular, testable, and scalable.

You may like: Trigger Framework in Salesforce

Conclusion

Mastering Salesforce design patterns is a game-changer for developers aiming to build scalable and maintainable applications. These patterns bring structure, clarity, and professionalism to your codebase, helping you stand out in the Salesforce ecosystem.

Whether you’re designing a complex CRM workflow or optimizing a single Apex trigger, using the right design pattern can significantly improve your project’s success.

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