Development with the Force.com Platform: Building Business Applications in the Cloud, Third Edition

Data Components

Data components allow fields and records from the Force.com database to be manipulated within a Visualforce page. They are divided into three categories:

Metadata-aware components—The HTML rendered by these smart components varies based on the definition of the field. These components are valid only when bound to database objects.

Primitive data components—If your field data is contained in a variable in Apex code rather than a database object, use primitive data components to render input and output HTML elements bound to their ...