What should a developer change about the Visualforce page to help with the page load errors?

Universal Containers has a Visualforce page that displays a table of every Container___c being rented by a given Account. Recently this page is failing with a view state limit because some of the customers rent over 10,000 containers.

What should a developer change about the Visualforce page to help with the page load errors?

A. Implement pagination with an OffsetController.

B. Use JavaScript remoting with SOQL Offset.

C. Implement pagination with a StandardSetController.

D. Use lazy loading and a transient List variable.

View Answer

Answer: C

Explanation:

To address the view state limit error caused by loading over 10,000 records in a Visualforce page, the developer should implement pagination with a StandardSetController.

StandardSetController: This controller allows developers to easily paginate large sets of records in Visualforce pages.

"A StandardSetController object contains a reference to a list of records with pagination support, similar to the display in a list view."

― Apex Developer Guide: StandardSetController Class Benefits:

Efficient Data Handling: It retrieves only a subset of records at a time, reducing the amount of data held in view state.

Built-in Pagination: Provides methods to navigate through pages of records (next, previous, etc.).

View State Limit: Visualforce pages have a view state limit of 170KB. Loading all records at once exceeds this limit.

"To optimize your Visualforce pages, minimize your use of view state. The view state of a Visualforce page is limited to 170KB."

― Visualforce Developer Guide: View State in Visualforce Pages

Why Not Other Options:

A. Implement pagination with an OffsetController: There’s no standard OffsetController in Visualforce. Implementing custom pagination with offsets is less efficient and can be complex.

B. Use JavaScript remoting with SOQL Offset: While JavaScript remoting can reduce view state size, using SOQL OFFSET is not efficient for large offsets (over 2,000 records).

"When using OFFSET with a large number of records, performance degrades significantly."

― SOQL and SOSL

Reference: OFFSET Clause

D. Use lazy loading and a transient List variable: Lazy loading can help, but it doesn’t solve the issue of handling large datasets efficiently. Transient variables reduce view state but do not manage data retrieval or pagination.

Conclusion: Implementing pagination with a StandardSetController is the recommended solution to handle large datasets efficiently in Visualforce pages and prevent view state limit errors.