DEV Community: Martín Vázquez

Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) 101: Setting up your dev environment (with VS Code)

Martín Vázquez — Sat, 08 Jan 2022 00:37:23 +0000

Hello again!

Looking for information about how to setup a dev environment to work with SFCC, I noticed that there are many, many guides on how to do that but using Eclipse and UX Studio.

In the certificaction course that I attended months ago, the instructor mentioned that in the recent years SF is encouraging developers to move from that IDE and start using Visual Studio Code which is a modern approach (at least in SFCC). Everyone knows that this coding tool has increased its popularity.

So during the training we used VS Code and since there are very few guides on how to do it, I would like to contribute about this topic.

Since I am a rookie in the SFCC world but I have been using VS Code for a while, there was no problem to me on how to setup the editor and one of the most important things is the use of Prophet Debugger, an extension that comes in handy when debugging, manage cartridges, syntax and other features.

Let's get started!

First of all, download Visual Studio Code here:

Download VS Code for your OS

Awesome! Now that we are into the editor, let's add the Prophet Debugger Extension. How? Click in the "Extensions" icon at the top-left icon as the next image shows:

Adding the Extension

Once you are there, you will see a big list of extensions, installed or not installed in your machine. In case you don't know, extensions are tools within VSCode to improve productivity while coding to highlight syntax, set colors according to the language, auto-formatting, etc.

Now, search for "Prophet Debugger" using the search bar (because, you know...search bar is for searching!), like this:

Now, you will be able to see the "Install" button so hit it to start adding the extension to your workspace. In my case is already installed, but you get the idea.

Perfect! Now it is installed. You can confirm this when you see the cloud icon at the bottom of top-left menu you already used in
previous steps, like this:

We need some files to add, in this case, I have been working with cartridges and stuff. To add folders you go the "File->Add Folder to Workspace", then select one and click Ok. The folder is going to be visible in the left side of the editor:

Saving the Workspace

You can save this workspace with all the configuration we have made so far. To do that, go to "File->Save Workspace As", set the name of your workspace and all set!

So far so good!

Integrate VSCode with Business Manager

Before this step one thing to mention is that the prerequisites for this is to know how to set your cartridge path which I am not covering in this guide. I think it is a basic topic that you already must know to go on with this.

Having said that, let's continue!

Create Code Version

In order to work with custom cartridges, we need a code version in our sandbox. To do this in the Business Manager, go to "Administration->Site Development->Code Deployment"

Once inside, click the "Add" button in the list of Code Versions available.
Replace the New Version text to the name of your version.
Click Apply
Finally, click "Activate" to make this the active code version

You will see a green tick at the left of the name of the code version selected:

Access Keys

The next step is to get access keys from the Business Manager, which are going to be configured in a .json file (which is covered in a moment) so you can upload your changes to the Storefront.

To do this, click in your name at the top-right to enter in your profile information. Once inside, click in Manage Access Keys

Once inside, click in the "Generate Access Keys" and then a window appears to select what kind of key you'll create. Select "WebDAV File Access & UX Studio" and click "Generate"

A prompt will appear, warning you that you should copy and keep in a safe place the generated key, because you won't be able to see them again. Do yourself a favor and save it in a place you could remember later.

Good! Now let's get back to VS Code.

Configuring dw.json

This file is special, since it is the file which connects you with the Business Manager and uploads your code. It is located in the root of the cartridge folder. If you don't have it, you can simply create it and name it like that: dw.json

The content of the file is like this:

hostname: You guessed it, here you type the domain of your sandbox (without http)
username: Your username in Business Manager
password: The key you created in the previous step
cartridgesPath: (optional) Set the cartridge path that you need
code-version : Name of the code version you created as well

Save the file and that's it.

Enable Auto-Upload

This feature in the Prophet Debugger extension helps you to automatically upload to the sandbox after saving the changes in VS Code. I personally have it activated, but it is optional.

To do this, go the Prophet Debugger. Here you can see three sections: "Controllers", "Logs" and "Cartridges". In the Cartridges section, if you hover in the title three dots will show. Click on them to activate Auto-Upload. See the image below:

When making changes, you can see in the Ouput section of VS Code the progress or if there is any error you must address.

Good to go! With this steps you are ready to start working with your sandbox using Visual Studio Code and Prophet Debugger. If you have any questions or problems let me know.

Until next time!

Another interesting story about Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud certification and how I nailed it!

Martín Vázquez — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 21:28:42 +0000

Hello there!

It is been a while since my last story and there was an interesting change that has happened in my career as a developer.

I have heard of the Salesforce ecosystem many years ago and it is a particular niche in the IT market that I was interested but unfortunately, the entry barrier is high, specially the official courses and materials.

The intention of this post, since there is not many information about this platform or the software SF develops and sells to many companies, is to reach as many people that are interested in this career path.

But I think I am going to get to the point (and the reason why you came here): If you want to achieve the Salesforce Commerce Cloud (B2C) certification, you'll need a great amount of effort and dedication.

In my particular case, I found a job opportunity, a paid traning program for front-end developers (I am more like...full-stack, but I applied anyway) with some experience in the field. After some interviews I was in.

I had ZERO experience and knowledge using Salesforce Commerce Cloud, just some approaches to their CRM but that is a different story.

The paid program consists in taking two official courses according to this website, which has the outline of what you need to achieve such certification:

Salesforce Certified B2C Commerce Developer Outline

It is a detailed explanation of everything you need and we'll get into that in a moment.

The official courses that I am talking about are:

B2C Commerce Developer with SFRA (CCD102)

B2C Commerce Merchant (CCM101)

Both of these were paid by the company, quite expensive by the way but they were useful. The instructor (a SF Architect) really knew what he has talking about and the way he explained the topics were awesome. As far as I know, most of the instructors that teach the official courses are well trained, so kudos for that.

B2C Commerce Merchant (CCM101)

The Merchant course (CCM101) is basically learn to operate the Commerce Cloud platform: Creating product catalogs, categories, navigation, products, inventory, prices, promotions, search results and many other topics. You will have the foundation on how become a merchant who operates the store in the front and back office.

The length of the course is a 4 hour lesson per day and it takes 5 days to complete it.

B2C Commerce Developer with SFRA (CCD102)

The Developer course (CCD102) is, as you can guessed it, related to development stuff using the SFRA (Storefront Reference Architecture), which is kind of a framework to make stuff in B2C Commerce Cloud.
This course will teach you about the architecture, how the framework works (MVC), models, controllers, views, templating, page designer, testing, configuring your store and your dev environment using VS Code and many other topics.

This is a more complex and complete course, which is also 4 hours per day in a 2 week period.

For both courses, the training center provides a student guide (SG) and a exercise guide (EG) and also, each student has a Sandbox Environment in order to practice the exercises.

Languages you need to know/learn

Mostly you will need javascript (ES5/ES6). According to some other devs, SFRA uses the language to code programs in the front and the back and using API's is a must which helps, for example, to use a pre-existing model to retrieve data in serializable JSON objects and the you can use it in your controller and well, if you are familiar with MVC, you know the rest.

Once you complete these courses you are good to go in order to nail that exam...or maybe not

More resources!

Trailhead

The official learning platform for all Salesforce related is here:
Salesforce Trailhead

There are A LOT of content related to Commerce Cloud that is really useful to study for the exam. I really really recommend taking and understanding clearly the content.
During the official courses the instructor can tell you which one you can take to enhance the knowledge.
Also, in the provided outline link above there is a list of the recommended courses as well:

SF Commerce Cloud Official Documentation

Of course, like any other languages or tools out there, the official documentation is your best friend.
It may seem that it need some work in the UI, but it is really effective, specially when searching for a specific topic. I really had to dig deeper to understand basic concepts.

SF B2C Documentation - Check it out here!

Ok, now I am ready! Bring that exam..I'm gonna ace it, no problem!

Hold your horses, let me give you the secret recipe...here we go.

What did I do to pass the exam?

Since each one of us has a different learning method or studying techniques, I can tell you how this worked for me:

We had a month of preparation, 3 weeks to take the courses just attend the four hours length and the you NEED to keep studying and practicing so basically I had days that I studied around 10+ hours, but not all the days, I had like a "crunch time" every 2-3 days.
So the schedule was tight in order to comply with the compromise with the company so, yeah it was exciting!
Take advantage of the Sandbox to practice! I use it a lot to practice and practice and practice where to do some operations within the Back office, for example, to import/export products. This works also when practicing the coding exercises over and over to completely understand what you are doing.
This is really important, because the exam has a lot of questions that will ask you about code syntax, real world scenarios and how to solve the problem as a developer or merchant. These questions are really tricky.

And since they are tricky, one important way to answer them correctly is having solid foundations of the concepts and theory of the SFRA architecture.

Read carefully the trailhead modules and learn from them. I have detected that some questions are based in the content of this modules as well. By the way, the quizzes of these modules are really easy, but do not expect the same kind of questions in the exam.

During the exam

As the exam outline mentioned, there are 65 questions to answer in 105 minutes and 65% to pass. So my recommendations are:

READ the questions CAREFULLY!
Take your time to understand completely the question because sometimes the context is key to choose the right answer. Many questions could be two possible answers...tricky questions as I said before
If you are taking the exam from home...DO NOT TRY TO CHEAT! There's someone else overseeing your movements, eye sight and if there is something suspicious they will stop you to check your desk or the room you are in.
If you are hesitating, you can save those questions for later and focus on all the questions you are sure they are OK
Despite the exam has more questions about development topics, take seriously the merchant topics. Many of these questions are easy and they could be the difference between passing or failing.

I learned this the hard way...because I failed my first attempt. It was a crushing defeat but I manage to suck it up and get back to study to achieve the certification in the second round.

All right folks, that's all I got for now. I hope this post can reach as many people that are interested in this career path. The e-com world is really expanding fast during the present times and there is a lot of opportunity to grow in this industry.

This won't be easy, so get ready!

From novice to...ninja? in Laravel (my true story).

Martín Vázquez — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 00:23:33 +0000

First blood!

My first post here in Dev after many, many hours reading nice articles here.
I have been trying to write nice content that can provide value to the readers and I think the best way to start telling my story about how I transitioned from being a complete native PHP programmer with basic (almost ZERO) Laravel skills to a programmer which deployed an application which has been used nationwide...in months!

This is not a story to brag about my accomplishments, this is a story which helps me ofter to remember what I am capable of, build confidence and feeling great about it. If you feel overwhelmed or believe that in order to get a nice job you need to complete all Laravel courses in Udemy, well...it is not that true.

So, let's get started!

As you know, being a web developer requires dedication, practice, patience, practice, know how to search for the best solution possible, practice, keep up with new stuff and...practice.

At the beginning of this year (2021 to be specific) I landed a job that required a PHP developer with experience in Laravel to start building a e-learning platform for a famous french automotive company that wanted to train their staff and distribuitors about a new car model.

The initial planning and requirements were all set and ready to start programming.

Easy peasy, right? Well, kind of...

As a novice Laravel developer, my "biggest" project was a small CRUD system for employees management. Now, I would have to design and create the database, figure out the application flow, build platform which generates quizzes, set up grades, check the student's progress and performance, set awards, and the list goes on...

Despite the lack of experience and being afraid (kind of), I stood up for the challenge and in my opinion it was like a medium-size web application (or maybe I am just too humble, maybe).

I would confess that there were difficult times, many long days of work, even weekends (just a couple tbh), hundreds of stack overflow searches and the help of my team leader. I remember the day when I was stuck designing the reward system, it was really fun but stressful, specially when you think ahead like, the release date.

But when I finished the first version of the app, that version which will be presented to the client and they were happy about the work, it was very, very satisfying.

As the project made progress, my confidence and determination rocketed so freaking high that I ended doing some advanced stuff like creating push notifications, setting cron jobs to send e-mail reminders, I even had to override the Auth funcionality which Laravel provides to get things working.

All of this done from a guy that had only made a course in Udemy (about Laravel of course)...

The platform was ready, mostly made by myself. Release date was in schedule, minor issues to attend, but everyone was satisfied with the product. I was really proud of this thing :)

I have to admit that my previous PHP experience helped me, at least to know what I have to search for in google lol for specific solutions to implement. Also, this project was made with the core fundamentals of the framework and some advanced techniques like sending formatted email, the push notifications, generate the diplomas and so on.

My point is: Just with good understanding of fundamentals you are going to be ok. Then you can move forward faster to learn.

After that I got a freelance job and apply what I already knew and the increased my experience. I am not afraid anymore to tackle these kind of projects using frameworks.

I hope you find useful this small experience and I would like to summarize the lessons learned:

Be confident even if you do not know everything.
Learn to search in the web. Again, we do not know everything and find some tips fast, understand and apply them is a nice skill.
If you mess it up, use point 2
If it works despite not using the best architecture or coding standards, you can improve it later (specially in tight schedules)
Many times we are capable of more that we think of...classic!