As Salesforce technologies change all the time, so does the need for skilled professionals. Whether you’re new to Salesforce development or a seasoned pro like SaaSy, one thing stays the same when you’re looking for your next job: you need to ace the interview.
Going into your job interview knowing a lot about the platform (which should get better as you move up in the company!) is a great way to get ahead of other applicants. I’m sharing a list of questions I’ve used in the past to interview people with a range of skills in the hopes that they will help anyone who is going on a technical interview better understand what to expect and what kinds of questions to ask.
Salesforce Lightning is an innovative component-based framework for rapidly developing enterprise applications with responsive and dynamic user experiences. As one of the most popular development platforms on the market, expertise in Lightning is a highly sought-after skillset for Salesforce developers and architects.
In this comprehensive guide, we will explore some of the most common and critical Lightning interview questions that prospective candidates should prepare for Whether you are just starting your Salesforce career or a seasoned veteran exploring new opportunities, being able to accurately answer these questions can set you apart during the recruitment process
What is Salesforce Lightning?
Salesforce Lightning refers to the latest generation of tools and technologies for building responsive, dynamic apps on the Salesforce platform. It consists of three main components:
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Lightning Experience – The revamped Salesforce UI with an intelligent, personalized interface optimized for any device It provides faster navigation and enhanced productivity features.
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Lightning Design System – A framework of design principles, patterns, and components for creating consistent UIs and experiences across devices. It enables developers to quickly build mobile-friendly apps.
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Lightning Components – Reusable app components built with Aura (a JavaScript framework) or the newer Lightning Web Components Components can be easily assembled into pages and apps,
Together, these pillars provide a modern, component-driven approach for developing enterprise apps on Salesforce with speed, consistency and performance. Lightning enables developers to build responsive user experiences rapidly.
How do we develop Lightning components?
There are two main approaches for developing Lightning components:
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Aura Components – These components are built using Aura, Salesforce’s own JavaScript framework. Aura provides the aura:namespace and uses HTML, CSS, JavaScript controllers and helpers to build components.
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Lightning Web Components – These are newer standardized components built using HTML and modern JavaScript. They offer better performance and reusability outside of Salesforce.
Components are developed using IDEs like Visual Studio Code with Salesforce extensions. They can be easily assembled into apps and pages using the Lightning App Builder. Components encapsulate business logic and connect to Salesforce data and actions.
What is Aura, and what is the use of aura: namespace?
Aura is Salesforce’s proprietary JavaScript framework for developing Lightning components. The aura: namespace provides a robust set of built-in components, attributes, events and APIs for building UIs and connecting to Salesforce data.
Some common uses of the aura:* namespace include:
- aura:component – Defines a Lightning component
- aura:attribute – Declares a component attribute
- aura:if – Renders markup conditionally
- aura:iteration – Iterates over a collection to render dynamic markup
- aura:handler – Registers event handlers
- aura:method – Defines a client-side controller method
The aura:* components and attributes enable declarative markup while handling tedium behind the scenes. This allows rapid UI development and binding to data.
Explain Lightning Experience?
Lightning Experience is the next-generation responsive UI for Salesforce built on the Lightning framework. It provides:
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A modern, intuitive interface optimized for any device – desktop, tablet or smartphone.
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Enhanced productivity with faster navigation, multi-tasking and data insights.
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Personalized user experience driven by predictive intelligence.
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Component-based architecture enabling customizable experiences.
Lightning Experience marks a major UI overhaul for Salesforce with three key themes:
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Speed – Faster navigation and mobile optimization.
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Intelligence – Smart predictive features.
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Design – Intuitive, consistent experiences.
With Lightning Experience, Salesforce combines its new UI technologies with under-the-hood improvements to analytics, security and performance.
Explain the Lightning Design System?
The Lightning Design System (LDS) is a library of reusable UI components, patterns, templates and best practices for designing consistent Salesforce experiences across devices. It allows developers to quickly build UIs aligned with Salesforce styles and best practices.
Some key capabilities provided by LDS:
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Components – Reusable markup and styles for UI elements like buttons, menus, picklists etc.
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Tokens – Variables for colors, sizing, spacing etc to enable theming/styling.
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Templates – Fragmented sample app templates and layouts.
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Blueprints – Visual specifications for designing UIs and components.
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Design Patterns – Guidelines for layout, interactions and responsive behavior.
Using LDS allows developers to tap into Salesforce’s own library of polished, production-ready components. This saves development time and ensures UIs stay on-brand.
How can we utilize a Lightning component in the VisualForce Page?
There are two main approaches for using Lightning components within Visualforce Pages:
Lightning Out
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Enables embedding a Lightning component in a Visualforce page using
<apex:slds /> -
Good for limited use cases with simple interactions.
Lightning Components for Visualforce
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Surfaces Lightning components in Visualforce using a custom markup
<c: NAME /> -
Allows two-way communication between components.
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Enables advanced use cases like wizards and multi-screen flows.
Lightning Out is simpler but has limitations around events and interactions. Lightning Components for Visualforce is more powerful but complex to implement. The approach depends on the specific use case and application requirements.
These questions provide a broad overview of the critical Salesforce Lightning concepts, frameworks and tools that drive modern application development on the platform. Being able to demonstrate a strong grasp of Lightning’s core tenets will go a long way during the recruitment screening process.
For more detailed technical questions that dig deeper into specific Lightning APIs, attributes, best practices and tools commonly asked during developer interviews, take a look at our technical guide here:
[30 Salesforce Lightning Developer Interview Questions & Answers for 2022]
Mastering both the broader architectural topics as well as the more intricate technical details will help reinforce your expertise in building responsive enterprise apps on Salesforce Lightning.
Where can we use Lightning components?
Lightning parts can be used in many places, from drag-and-drop parts that make up Lightning App Builder pages to buttons on record detail pages that let you do quick actions. Components can also be exposed as tabs or URL addressable for extra customisation.
Besides the most common places we already talked about, Lightning components can also be found in the following less common places:
- The Utility Bar
- Outlook and Gmail integrations
- Flows
- Visualforce pages
- External web pages
- Pre-chat snap-ins
How can we express data into our HTML markup?
If we wish to express data within our HTML markup we need to use bind expressions. The syntax differs between LWC, as do the capabilities.
In Aura we use can use one of two syntaxes, “{!v. value}” and “{#v. value}”. The first enables two way data-binding (i. e. The second one is for one-way binding; if you change it in one place, it changes everywhere else as well.
In LWC, we have a single syntax to follow, simply by using “{value}”.
Alongside simply displaying pieces of data, we can also use conditionals and iterations to manipulate the final markup. For simple “if” logic we can use “aura:if” in Aura and “if:true”/“if:false” in LWC. We can use either “aura:iteration” or “for:each” in Aura or LWC to show arrays. They both work the same way: they take a piece of markup inside the array and repeat it once for each item in the array.
Salesforce Lightning Interview Questions and Answers | Lightning Aura Components Questions |
FAQ
What is aura in Salesforce interview questions?
What is Salesforce lightning Aura components?
What is the difference between Aura component and LWC?
How many types of lightning components are there?
What is Aura in Lightning components?
Aura is the open source technology that powers Lightning Components. The aura: namespace contains all of the basic building blocks for defining components and applications. 52. Is Lightning an MVC framework? No, it’s a component-based framework. 53. What is difference between Visualforce Components and Lightning Components?
How can I use lightning events to communicate between aura and LWC?
How can you use Lightning Events to communicate between Aura and LWC components?Ans: You can use Lightning Events to communicate between Aura and LWC components. To do this, create a custom Lightning event in your Aura component, fire it from the Aura component, and handle it in the LWC component using the “lightning/uiRecordApi” module. Q43.
What is the difference between lightning & aura application events?
By default, events fired by Lightning components bubble up and are only handled by its parent component, regardless of the phase. Aura Application events also have a third phase, called the Default phase. In this phase the event handlers are called non-deterministically.
How do I deploy Lightning aura components between environments?
Describe the process of deploying Lightning Aura components between environments.Ans: To deploy Lightning Aura components between environments, you can use Salesforce’s deployment tools, such as Change Sets or Salesforce DX.
