Salesforce Apex Trigger: Syntax, Events, and Test Classes

Apex triggers are Salesforce routines that run automatically before or after record insert, update, delete, and undelete events, and must be designed for bulk transactions rather than individual records to avoid governor-limit failures such as exceeding 100 synchronous SOQL queries or 150 DML statements. Effective trigger development depends on understanding the seven events, context-variable availability, the order of execution, and the distinction between before triggers, which can modify incoming records directly, and after triggers, which are suited to work requiring record IDs. The guidance emphasizes bulkification through Sets, Maps, single queries, and batched DML operations, while warning against queries or updates inside loops, unguarded recursion, and reliance on execution order among multiple triggers. It recommends a single routing trigger with handler classes to organize event-specific logic, improve testability, and make processing order explicit. Apex tests must provide at least 75% code coverage, include some coverage for every trigger, and test positive, negative, single-record, and high-volume scenarios such as 200-record inserts; however, they validate only server-side behavior, so browser-level testing may be needed to verify Lightning UI rendering and user-visible validation errors.

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