Salesforce REST APIRemote SOQL, SOSL, CRUD and other available actions

IntroductionAbout myself:Bohdan Dovhan

Salesforce Development Team LeadSalesforce Certified Force.com DeveloperSalesforce Certified Force.com Advanced Developer 7 years of Development experience

Representational state transferRepresentational state transfer is the software architectural style of the World Wide Web. The purpose of REST architecture is to induce

* Performance Продуктивність?* Scalability Масштабованість?* Simplicity Простота?* Modifiability Змінюваність?* Visibility Видимість?* Portability Переносність?* Reliability Надійність

Roy Fielding coined the termThe term representational state transfer was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation at UC Irvine. REST has been applied to describe desired web architecture, to identify existing problems, to compare alternative solutions and to ensure that protocol extensions would not violate the core constraints that make the web successful. Fielding used REST to design HTTP 1.1 and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI).

RESTful systemsTo the extent that systems conform to the constraints of REST they can be called RESTful. RESTful systems typically, but not always, communicate over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) with the same HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH ) that web browsers use to retrieve web pages and to send data to remote servers. REST systems interface with external systems as web resources identified by Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), for example /people/tom, which can be operated upon using standard verbs such as GET /people/tom.

Examples* Google Glass API* Twitter API* Amazon Web Services* Atom (RESTful alternative to RSS)* Tesla Model S uses RESTful calls to communicate between mobile devices and car: http://docs.timdorr.apiary.io/

Understanding Force.com REST Resources

A REST resource is an abstraction of a piece of information, such as a single data record, a collection of records, or even dynamic real-time information. Each resource in the Force.com REST API is identified by a named URI, and is accessed using standard HTTP methods (HEAD, GET, POST, PATCH, DELETE). The Force.com REST API is based on the usage of resources, their URIs, and the links between them.

NOTA BENE: no “PUT” verb. PUT was used to replace the entire resource, not used in Force.com REST API

Understanding Force.com REST Resources

You use a resource to interact with your Salesforce or Force.com organization. For example, you can:

Retrieve summary information about the API versions available to you.Obtain detailed information about a Salesforce object such as an Account or a custom object.Obtain detailed information about Force.com objects, such as User or a custom object.Perform a query or search.Update or delete records.

What is the difference between HEAD and GET?

The HTTP methods are used to indicate the desired action, such as retrieving information, as well as creating, updating, and deleting records.

• HEAD is used to retrieve resource metadata. The same as GET but lacks resp. body• GET is used to retrieve information, such as basic resource summary information.• POST is used to create a new object.• PATCH is used to update a record.• DELETE is used to delete a record.

REST Principles: Stateless and CachingStateless

Each request from client to server must contain all the information necessary to understand the request, and not use any stored context on the server. However, the representations of the resources are interconnected using URLs, which allow the client to progress between states.

Caching behavior

Responses are labeled as cacheable or non-cacheable.

REST Principles: Uniformity and Naming

Uniform interface

All resources are accessed with a generic interface over HTTP.

Named resources

All resources are named using a base URI that follows your Force.com URI.

REST Principles: Layers and Authentication

Layered components

The Force.com REST API architecture allows for the existence of such intermediaries as proxy servers and gateways to exist between the client and the resources.

Authentication

The Force.com REST API supports OAuth 2.0 (an open protocol to allow secure API authorization).

JSON vs. XMLSupport for JSON and XML

JSON is the default. You can use the HTTP ACCEPT header to select either JSON or XML, or append .json or .xml to the URI (for example, /Account/001D000000INjVe.json).

The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format is supported with UTF-8. Date-time information is in ISO8601 format.

XML serialization is similar to SOAP API. XML requests are supported in UTF-8 and UTF-16, and XML responses are provided in UTF-8.

Relationship URLs a.k.a. “Friendly”Why make two API calls when you can make just one? A friendly URL provides an intuitive way to construct REST API requests and minimizes the number of round-trips between your app and Salesforce org. Friendly URLs are available in API version 36.0 and later. This functionality is exposed via the SObject Relationships resource. Accessing a contact’s parent account without a friendly URL involves requesting the contact record using the SObject Rows resource. Then you examine the account relationship field to obtain the account ID and request the account record with another call to SObject Rows. Using a friendly URL, you can access the account in a single call directly from the contact’s path: /services/data/v36.0/sobjects/contact/id/account.

REST API vs. SOAP API vs. Bulk APISOAP API may be more convenient to process multiple records ( it has the same method for one or multiple records DML operation while REST API has different resource for multiple records DML operation /composite/tree/ )

If you need to process huge amount of data, use Bulk API

While it is possible to query or search for multiple records in REST API using one request, to perform Update\Delete operations you need to perform one request per each record or use /composite/batch/ to unite DML operations in a batch

How can we know available versions?Versions resource. URI: /

Formats: JSON, XML; HTTP Method: GET; Authentication: none; Parameters: none

Lists summary information about each Salesforce version currently available, including the version, label, and a link to each version's root.

http://login.salesforce.com/services/data/

http://login.salesforce.com/services/data/v37.0 Is Summer’16 is on your production?

List Available REST Resources

Get a List of Objects

Get Field and Other Metadata for an Object

Get Field and Other Metadata for an Object

Running SOQL queryselect Id, Name from Organization

select Id, Name from ApexClass

Running SOSL searchFIND {REST API DEMO} RETURNING ApexClass (Id, Name), ApexPage (Id, Name)

find {oil} returning account(id,name), opportunity(id,name)

find {oil} returning account(id,name), opportunity(id,name)

Read record from another Organization

CRUD: Create using JSON Data

CRUD: Create using convenient interface

CRUD: Read

CRUD: Read using convenient interface

Certain objects do not allow DML in Apex

Organization o = [ select Id, Name from Organization ];o.Name += 'x';update o;

yields: Line: 3, Column: 1 DML not allowed on Organization

However, some of them allow REST API Update operations

CRUD: Update using JSON Data

CRUD: Update using convenient interface

CRUD: Delete

CRUD: Delete using convenient interface

CRUD: Error Handling

Access to custom REST Servicesrel=/services/apexrest/AccoutEnhanced?name=oil

Access to custom REST Services

References1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REST2. http://docs.timdorr.apiary.io/#3. http://www.slideshare.net/alexeiskachykhin/representational-state-transfer-365184694. http://www.slideshare.net/AshishGore3/dt-meetup-django-rest-framework-vs-tasty-pie5. https://habrahabr.ru/post/38730/6. https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/

Q & A? Questions?

AND FINALLY: MAY BE THE FORCE.COM WITH YOU...