Display child records of parent on visualforce without apex controller

Most of you may think to show the list of child records of a parent record on visualforce page standard controller, apex extension is required. However this does not require any extension class. I will explain you how you can do this:

Problem Statement

Create an inline visualforce page to display the list of "Active" contacts under an account.

Approaches

As this is a inline visualforce page, standard controller is must. There are two approaches to build this:

• Create an apex extension to query all "Active" (Status is a custom field created on contact) contacts
• Show list with the help of child relation

Here in this post, I will show you the how second approach will work. The visualforce page code as follows:

<apex:page standardController="Account">
  <apex:pageBlock title="{!Account.Name+' Active Contacts'}">
      <Apex:pageBlockTable value="{!Account.Contacts}" var="con">
          <Apex:column rendered="{!con.Status__c = 'Active'}">
              {!Con.FirstName}
          </apex:column>
          <Apex:column rendered="{!con.Status__c = 'Active'}">
              {!Con.LastName}
          </apex:column>
          <Apex:column rendered="{!con.Status__c = 'Active'}">
              {!Con.Email}
          </apex:column>
          <Apex:column rendered="{!con.Status__c = 'Active'}">
              {!Con.Phone}
          </apex:column>
      </Apex:pageBlockTable>
  </apex:pageBlock>
</apex:page>

Assumptions

• Created custom field "Status" on contact with values as
  • Active
  • Inactive

Explanation

• Apex:pageBlockTable : To show table of contact records.
• value="{!Account.Contacts}" : This is important. Contacts is a child relationship API name. It's referring to all contacts of an Account. You can use any child relationship API name here. For custom object relationship, you can access it with "__r".
• Apex:column : To show the columns, referring each to field of contact.
• rendered="{!con.Status__c = 'Active'}" : Condition to show only Active contacts.

Output

Accounts having active contacts

As you can see, first section is inline visualforce page that we developed, showing all active contacts only. In second section, its a contact related list having total 4 contacts, out from which, one contact is inactive.