count

Counts the number of characters, if the value is text/html. Counts the number of items within a Collection, if the value is a Collection. Places the result into a new variable. While a Collection's number of items can be easily accessed through the Collection value's size() method, this command offers a safer way of doing this as it doesn't cause errors should the target variable have a null value, or not actually hold a Collection value.

Attributes

var
Required	Value type	EL-evaluated
Yes	String	No
Defines the name of the variable that will receive the number of items as a Number value.

value
Required	Value type	EL-evaluated
Yes	Any	Yes
The resolved value of this attribute can either be the Collection whose items are counted, or text/html whose characters are counted. However, any kind of value is accepted - even `null`. The result of the count for any other value will always be 1, while `null` results in 0.

Examples

One use for the count command is to find out the number of records a Salesforce data retrieval command managed to retrieve:

CODE

<query var="opportunities" select="SELECT Id, Name FROM Opportunity"><count var="thisManyOppos" value="${opportunities}">