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Salesforce Lightning components overview

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There’s a lot of noise around Salesforce Lightning Components usage for Salesforce App solutions among developers these days.

Salesforce Lightning and Lightning Components were created as an answer to the rise in popularity of both mobile device use and responsive web development. And one thing we can tell you, the possibilities of what you can develop with Salesforce Lightning are endless.

What is Salesforce Lightning?

Salesforce Lightning is a component-based framework for app development from Salesforce.com that is designed to simplify processes for business users, who typically do not have programming experience.

Lightning contains a set of tools and technologies behind a significant upgrade to the Salesforce1 Platform (formal App Cloud), which is the Salesforce mobile app development platform.

The main features of Lightning are:

  • Experience, a graphical user interface (GUI) that is optimized for web speed
  • Lightning App Builder, which provides drag and drop possibilities to enable seamless app creation and customization.
  • Lightning Component Framework, which includes tools and extensions that empower the development of reusable components and standalone apps and also customization of the Salesforce1 Mobile App.
  • AppExchange for Components, where you find components that are available in the App Builder.
  • Design System, which offers style guides and user experience best practices for app development.
  • Lightning Connect, an integration tool that makes it easier for Force.com apps to consume data from any external source that conforms to the OData specification

What are Lightning Components?

Lightning Components are a user interface (UI) framework that is used to create attractive applications for desktop and mobile technologies. Lightning Components are self-contained and reusable units of an application.

Salesforce Admins deploy these components to construct single-page web applications that provide an end-to-end experience on the platform for a variety of functions.

It is worth to remember that:

  • Lightning components have .cmp extensions.
  • Lightning components are based on the concept of web components.
  • It uses Apex, JavaScript, Html, and CSS to build the Salesforce lightning app.

Lightning Components can be very easily created, divided, and integrated with other components, which lets you create highly customized pages. Instead of just creating separate components throughout the application, developers can extend lightning web components, allowing new components to be built on top of one another.

3 Types of Lightning Components

There are three different types of Lightning Components you should know about.

Standard Lighting Components These come pre-installed in your salesforce object page layouts. You can hide them, or choose not to use them, but you can’t get rid of them. That’s why they are called Standard Lighting Components.

Custom Developed Lighting Components These are advanced lightning components and they are developed based on custom needs of the organization.

AppExchange Lightning Components Some of the components you might need, may have already been built and are available in the AppExchange marketplace. You just need to install them, then drag and drop them into the space you want to use it.

Lightning Component Framework

It's a structure used for building single-page applications with dynamic, responsive User Interface for Lightning Platform applications.

Structure of Lightning Component

In a nutshell Lightning Web Components are just custom HTML elements that are built using HTML, JavaScript and CSS on the front end with the ability to connect to Apex on the backend as a controller. The great thing is that both Lightning Web Components and Aura Components can coexist on the same page.Once working with the lightning component framework you will notice that it has many advantages. Here are a few:

  • Salesforce Lightning framework helps to build and develop applications faster.
  • These components can be shared with other Salesforce users.
  • This Lightning framework supports all browser technologies like HTML5, CSS, and more.
  • It offers more user interaction.
  • It used JSON to exchange data between the server and the client.
  • It provides reusability with responsive and attractive designs.
  • It provides an attractive user interface.
  • This framework helps in building different apps for mobile devices and desktop purposes.
  • It helps in applications fast performance.

How to start building lighting components?

To create Salesforce Lightning Components, you must:

  • Log into your Salesforce developer account and navigate to Developer Console.

  • Then go to File | New | Lightning Component.

  • Name the lightning component with your desired name, describe the component. and click on the Save button.

  • Add component configurations to the new component. You can select as many options in the Component Configuration section as you wish

  • Click Submit to create the component.

Where You Can Use Lightning Components

With Lightning, the CRM software is responding to demands for a faster, simpler application development process and more streamlined cycles between IT, business, and clients. You can use Lightning components to customize your Salesforce org in many different ways. You can use it to create stand-alone apps that are hosted on Salesforce.

Once you begin to understand Lightning Components you will begin to better understand Salesforce itself. Soon you will realize that you can pretty much do anything in Salesforce.

If you need help with Salesforce Lightning Components Builder or have something a little more complex that might require some advanced developer knowledge? We can help. Contact us at help@cloudanswers.com and let us know about your project.

Read also How to use Lightning Components in Flows


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