Salesforce API? Anyone done any Delphi work with this? Ant component sets around? Just thought I'd ask here before I start digging. Any pointers gratefully received.
Last I looked SalesForce had a REST/JSON api. You can use the Rest client library components, do your queries and operations and get data in a TDataSet using the RestResponseDatasetAdapter component.
Salesforce has several ways to access it using APIs. You can use SOAP and that is relatively easy to do. You can use the REST APIs and those are also easy. There is a separate set of Bulk Loader APIs that I haven't used, but they also are probably easy.
David is oversimplifying the problems associated with Salesforce. The real hassle is OAuth2 authentication, depending on the route you take. I did this with XE7 (haven't tried XE8 yet) and authentication was extremely difficult and required substantial analysis and coding effort to get it to display a web page, intercept the authorization tokens and finally get Salesforce to accept your REST requests. After authentication, the REST is easy (pun intended.) Be prepared to learn about OAuth2. Recommended reading is the RFP, which is actually pretty easy to read and understand. There is an option with OAuth2 that permits using tokens and such, but I haven't tried that yet. Salesforce recommends using the web browser authentication approach. The Salesforce documentation is mandatory for authentication. Be sure to tweak all the jots and tittles they tell you to in your Salesforce console to enable the things you need to have enabled.
Let me add that the effort was worth it. I now have a tool that allows me to run ad hoc queries against Salesforce tables, download the results and export the data to local applications. We have several clients that use Salesforce and it is generally much easier to grab the data and work with it locally than it is to try to write the Apex code and all of the Salesforce testing and migration requirements. This is especially true for "one-off" projects.
Milan - glad you got it working with SalesForce. Would you be interested in doing a webinar showing how you connected RAD Studio to SFDC? if interested, send an email to davidi@embarcadero.com.
Last I looked SalesForce had a REST/JSON api. You can use the Rest client library components, do your queries and operations and get data in a TDataSet using the RestResponseDatasetAdapter component.
ReplyDeleteThanks David Intersimone that's what I was planning to do. Just hoped someone had done it already :-)
ReplyDeleteSalesforce has several ways to access it using APIs. You can use SOAP and that is relatively easy to do. You can use the REST APIs and those are also easy. There is a separate set of Bulk Loader APIs that I haven't used, but they also are probably easy.
ReplyDeleteDavid is oversimplifying the problems associated with Salesforce. The real hassle is OAuth2 authentication, depending on the route you take. I did this with XE7 (haven't tried XE8 yet) and authentication was extremely difficult and required substantial analysis and coding effort to get it to display a web page, intercept the authorization tokens and finally get Salesforce to accept your REST requests. After authentication, the REST is easy (pun intended.) Be prepared to learn about OAuth2. Recommended reading is the RFP, which is actually pretty easy to read and understand. There is an option with OAuth2 that permits using tokens and such, but I haven't tried that yet. Salesforce recommends using the web browser authentication approach. The Salesforce documentation is mandatory for authentication. Be sure to tweak all the jots and tittles they tell you to in your Salesforce console to enable the things you need to have enabled.
Let me add that the effort was worth it. I now have a tool that allows me to run ad hoc queries against Salesforce tables, download the results and export the data to local applications. We have several clients that use Salesforce and it is generally much easier to grab the data and work with it locally than it is to try to write the Apex code and all of the Salesforce testing and migration requirements. This is especially true for "one-off" projects.
ReplyDeleteMilan - glad you got it working with SalesForce. Would you be interested in doing a webinar showing how you connected RAD Studio to SFDC? if interested, send an email to davidi@embarcadero.com.
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested as well
ReplyDeleteNancy Lescouhier TMS Software has a Cloud Pack, try ask them if they are interested in adding such a new feature to their library.
ReplyDeleteEdwin Yip yes, I have that . I was thinking of using that as a base.
ReplyDelete