Force.com API demystified using SoapUI

I am working on a project to create Salesforce.com library for Python. I always wished for fastest web service invocation when it comes to multiple systems interacting with each other. Salesforce.com's Force.com platform exposes its API through enterprise, partner and metadata WSDL. For this purpose I scrutinized the WSDL file very closely and used SoapUI to generate the stub.

Lets jump into steps on how we do it:
1. Create a new project and select WSDL file to load and generate stub by hitting OK button.

 Once the stub is generated you can expand the node to see the list of operations exposed by the server as SOAP interface :

3. Login method:
On expanding any service node, you will see "Request" under it. Double click it to open new window on right side pane. This window will allow you to make HTTP POST requests to server. You can see the SOAP enevelope is already created in left pane in new window. All you need to do is fill in the parameters for the request and hit submit button. IMP: Make sure you set the endpoint properly. You can find this endpoint in bottom part of WSDL file as an attribute of any of SOAP 1.1 or 1.2 binding.

I entered my username and password(password+security token) here and submitted the request. On right side pane you can see the response envelope with my data like sessionId, serverURL, userInfo.

4. Creating Sobject records:
In case you need to perform further operations you need to pay extra attention here. Consider we need to create a case record through SoapUI. Double click on create operation and get the request window. Fill the parameter values as shown. Before submitting make sure you set the endpoint as the URL returned as serverUrl in the response of login method.

On successfully executing this server will return the recordId of Sobject record.


I hope this blog helps you get started on understanding how API works and more specifically the detailed flow of data on HTTP using SoapUI.

Cheers!
Kartik

Salesforce's Force.com SaaS Platform

We all might be aware of Salesforce.com because of its CRM. The global market leader in Cloud Computing is leaving its mark in the industry by providing powerful tools to internet users. One such platform salesforce.com is providing is Force.com. It is based on the same MVC(Model-View-Controller) paradigm as in Java based WebApps. It is basically a PaaS (Platform as a Service) company making huge efforts to hold its position in the cloud league.Force.com is the place where you can develop cloud application that will reside on the salesforce' data-centers. They want all of developers to concentrate on business logic to be implemented rather than the maintenance and administration of resources leveraged.

A Force.com application basically comprises of set of tabs, visualforce pages, workflows, approval processes, triggers and controllers containing business logic. We can develop Application in two ways: Declarative and Programmatic approach. In declerative we develop Apps with clicks whereas in programmatic we code everything. Best of the Apps will include mixture of both approaches.

Considering each component under MVC approach, First is Model. Model is basically abstraction layer between actual salesforce's databases and controllers(business logic). Model is composed of set of objects(Salesforce paradigm). You will have set of standard objects, which will be required for any enterprise App. You can create web pages known as VisualForce pages which are rendered as HTML on server for each HTTP request. Pages. Visualforce pages are  developed using Apex page tags. These are similar to HTML tags but with some special attributes and new element library specific to Force.com. Business logic for Apps is written in a controller. A controller is basically a class which controls the functionality of the page associated with it. The controller code is written in Apex language. It is a force.com specific cloud app development language. Controller has got instance variable, constructors, methods similar to that we do in Java. These methods and variables are bind to page controllers using merge fields. Suppose there is a instance variable "UserName" we will bind it to the page component like: <apex:outputField value='{!<objectName>.UserName}'/>

For more details on Force.com :

Apex: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/salesforce_apex_language_reference.pdf

VisualForce: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/pages/salesforce_pages_developers_guide.pdf