In this chapter, you’ll learn about the Apex development lifecycle, and which
organization and tools to use to develop Apex. You’ll also learn about testing and deploying
Apex code.
Create a Developer or Sandbox Org
You can run Apex in a production org, a developer org, or a sandbox org. You can develop Apex in a developer org or a sandbox org, but not in a production org.
Learning Apex
After you have your developer account, there are many resources available to you for learning about Apex
Writing Apex Using Development Environments
There are several development environments for developing Apex code. The Developer Console and the Salesforce extensions for Visual Studio Code allow you to write, test, and debug your Apex code. The code editor in the user interface enables only writing code and doesn’t support debugging.
Writing Tests
Testing is the key to successful long-term development and is a critical component of the development process. We strongly recommend that you use a test-driven development process, that is, test development that occurs at the same time as code development.
Deploying Apex to a Sandbox Organization
Sandboxes create copies of your Salesforce org in separate environments. Use them for development, testing, and training without compromising the data and applications in your production org. Sandboxes are isolated from your production org, so operations that you perform in your sandboxes don’t affect your production org.
Deploying Apex to a Salesforce Production Organization
After you have finished all of your unit tests and verified that your Apex code is executing properly, the final step is deploying Apex to your Salesforce production organization.