Attaching an image to a record

Associating an image with a record is a common requirement while implementing Salesforce, for example, adding a photo to a contact or a custom news story sObject. Using the standard attachments functionality creates a disconnect between the record and the image, requiring additional clicks to view the image, and often relies on the user following a naming convention when uploading the file.

In this recipe, we will create a Visualforce page to allow a user to attach an image to a contact record. The page also displays the image if one has been uploaded. This page will be embedded into the standard contact page layout.

Note

While the size limit for a record attachment in Salesforce is 5 MB, as the attachment in this recipe is rendered on a Visualforce page, it is important to keep the size of the file as small as possible to avoid lengthy download times and excessive bandwidth usage.

Getting ready

This recipe makes use of a controller extension, so this will need...