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title: Best Practices for Controllers and Controller Extensions
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---

# Best Practices for Controllers and Controller Extensions

## Enforcing Sharing Rules in Controllers

Like other Apex classes, custom controllers and controller extensions run in system mode.

Typically, you want a controller or controller extension to respect a user’s organization-wide defaults, role hierarchy, and sharing rules. You can do that by using the `with sharing` keywords in the class definition. For information, see “Using the `with sharing`, `without sharing`, and `inherited sharing` Keywords” in the [Apex Developer Guide](https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_classes_keywords_sharing.htm).

**note:** If a controller extension extends a standard controller, the logic from the standard controller doesn’t execute in system mode. Instead, it executes in user mode, in which the permissions, field-level security, and sharing rules of the current user apply.

## Controller Constructors Evaluate Before Setter Methods

Do not depend on a setter method being evaluated before a constructor. For example, in the following component, the component's controller depends on the setter for `selectedValue` being called before the constructor method:

```visualforce
<apex:component controller="CustCmpCtrl">
      <apex:attribute name="value" description="" 
                      type="String" required="true" 
                      assignTo="{!selectedValue}">
      </apex:attribute>
      //...
      //...
</apex:component>
```

```visualforce
public class CustCmpCtrl {
      
      // Constructor method
      public CustCmpCtrl() {
            if (selectedValue != null) {
                EditMode = true;
            }
      }
      
      private Boolean EditMode = false;

      // Setter method
      public String selectedValue { get;set; }
}      

```

Since the constructor is called before the setter, `selectedValue` will always be null when the constructor is called. Thus, `EditMode` will never be set to true.

## Methods may evaluate more than once — do not use side-effects

Methods, including methods in a controller, action attributes, and expressions, may be called more than once. Do not depend on evaluation order or side-effects when creating custom methods in a controller or controller extension.