General SFDC API questions Flashcards
How many types of API’s avaliable in salesforce?
- Analytics REST API
- Apex REST API
- Apex SOAP API
- Bulk API
- Chatter REST API
- Metadata API
- REST API
- SOAP API
- Streaming API
- Tooling API
- User Interface API
When to Use REST API
REST API provides a powerful, convenient, and simple REST-based web services interface for interacting with Salesforce. Its advantages include ease of integration and development, and it’s an excellent choice of technology for use with mobile applications and web projects. For certain projects, you may want to use REST API with other Salesforce REST APIs. To build UI for creating, reading, updating, and deleting records, including building UI for list views, actions, and dependent picklists, use User Interface API. To build UI for Chatter, communities, or recommendations, use Chatter REST API. If you have many records to process, consider using Bulk API, which is based on REST principles and optimized for large sets of data.
When to Use SOAP API
SOAP API provides a powerful, convenient, and simple SOAP-based web services interface for interacting with Salesforce. You can use SOAP API to create, retrieve, update, or delete records. You can also use SOAP API to perform searches and much more. Use SOAP API in any language that supports web services.
For example, you can use SOAP API to integrate Salesforce with your org’s ERP and finance systems. You can also deliver real-time sales and support information to company portals and populate critical business
When to Use Chatter REST API
Use Chatter REST API to display Chatter feeds, users, groups, and followers, especially in mobile applications. Chatter REST API also provides programmatic access to files, recommendations, topics, notifications, Data.com purchasing, and more. Chatter REST API is similar to APIs offered by other companies with feeds, such as Facebook and Twitter, but it also exposes Salesforce features beyond Chatter.
When to Use Streaming API
Use Streaming API to receive near-real-time streams of data that are based on changes in Salesforce records or custom payloads. For Salesforce record changes, Salesforce publishes notifications when the changes occur. For custom notifications, you can publish event messages. Subscribers can receive notifications using CometD—an implementation of the Bayeux protocol that simulates push technology. Clients can subscribe to some types of events with Apex triggers or declaratively with Process Builder and flows.
When to Use Apex REST API
Use Apex REST API when you want to expose your Apex classes and methods so that external applications can access your code through REST architecture. Apex REST API supports both OAuth 2.0 and Session ID for authorization.
When to Use Apex SOAP API
Use Apex SOAP API when you want to expose Apex methods as SOAP web service APIs so that external applications can access your code through SOAP.
Apex SOAP API supports both OAuth 2.0 and Session ID for authorization.
When to Use Tooling API
Use Tooling API to integrate Salesforce metadata with other systems. Metadata types are exposed as sObjects, so you can access one component of a complex type. This field-level access speeds up operations on complex metadata types. You can also build custom development tools for Force.com applications. For example, use Tooling API to manage and deploy working copies of Apex classes and triggers and Visualforce pages and components. You can also set checkpoints or heap dump markers, execute anonymous Apex, and access logging and code coverage information.
What is Call In and Call Out?
Call In is used to exposing our webservices to another system.
Call out enables you to tightly integrate your Apex with an external service by making a call to an external Web service or sending a HTTP request from Apex code and then receiving the response.
What is WSDL ?
WSDL (Web Services Description Language) is an XML document that describes a web service. WSDL is derived from Microsoft’s Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and IBM’s Network Accessible Service Specification Language (NASSL). WSDL replaces both NASSL and SOAP as the means of expressing business services in the UDDI registry. It is used in combination with SOAP and XML Schema to provide web services over the Internet. A client program connecting to a web service can read the WSDL to determine what functions are available on the server. Any special datatypes used are embedded in the WSDL file in the form of XML Schema. The client can then use SOAP to actually call one of the functions listed in the WSDL. There are two types of WSDL in Salesforce:
Enterprise WSDL
Partner WSDL
What is difference between Enterprise WSDL and Partner WSDL?
- Enterprise WSDL
a. Is strongly typed.
b. Is tied (bound) to a specific configuration of Salesforce (ie. a
specific organization’s Salesforce configuration).
c. It changes if modifications (e.g custom fields or custom
objects) are made to an organization’s Salesforce configuration. - Partner WSDL
a. Is loosely typed.
b. Can be used to reflect against/interrogate any configuration of
Salesforce (ie. any organization’s Salesforce configuration).Is
static, and hence does not change if modifications are made to
an organization’s Salesforce configuration.
How SOAP can be accessed ?
- SOAP can communicate with the use of the WSDL file, without the WSDL file the integration won’t function.
- The message format in SOAP is XML
How to generate WSDL file?
- Go to Setup -> Develop -> apex classes
- Click on Apex class
- Click on Generate WSDL button
- Generate WSDL code from class
- Save as .wsdl file in your system
How to consume external WSDL file
- In the application, from Setup, enter Apex Classes in the Quick Find box, then select Apex Classes.
- Click Generate from WSDL.
- Click Browse to navigate to a WSDL document on your local hard drive or network, or type in the full path. This WSDL document is the basis for the Apex class you are creating.
- Click Parse WSDL to verify the WSDL document contents. The application generates a default class name for each namespace in the WSDL document and reports any errors. Parsing fails if the WSDL contains schema types or constructs that aren’t supported by Apex classes, or if the resulting classes exceed the 1 million character limit on Apex classes. For example, the Salesforce SOAP API WSDL cannot be parsed.
- Modify the class names as desired. While you can save more than one WSDL namespace into a single class by using the same class name for each namespace, Apex classes can be no more than 1 million characters total.
- Click Generate Apex. The final page of the wizard shows which classes were successfully generated, along with any errors from other classes. The page also provides a link to view successfully generated code.
What is remote site settings ?
Remote site settings is used to authorize the endpoint and allow us to whom integrate(end user)
