Build your API with Force.com &
Heroku
Jeff Douglas, Appirio, CloudSpokes Platform Architect
@jeffdonthemic

Jeff Douglas
CloudSpokes Platform Architect
@jeffdonthemic

All about CloudSpokes
CloudSpokes is a crowdsourcing development community
where members compete in design, coding and algorithm
challenges for cash, prizes, badges and bragging rights.
§ ~600,000 member community
§ 40-60 challenges in-flight at any one time
§ Force.com platform manages members, challenges, payments, etc.
§ API calls Force.com via REST and JSON

Why build an API?
§ IT departments can provide limited access
to internal development teams without
exposing the implementation details of
Salesforce.com
§ ISVs can better serve existing customers
by extending their platform
§ Startups and entrepreneurs can build their
business upon Force.com

Why choose Force.com?
§ Build your business logic in Apex
§ No admin UI to develop and maintain
§ Security -- FTW!
§ Declarative development
§ Reports & dashboards
§ Sandbox environments, tools, deployment processes, etc.

Why choose Heroku?
§ Scale up and down rapidly
§ Fork applications for testing, QA, etc.
§ Distributed development with Git
§ Postgres (fork, follow, share)
§ Heroku add-ons
§ Free to get started
§ Excellent support

Designing your API
Developers want the following:
§ Simple, intuitive and easy to learn
§ Great documentation
§ Code samples
§ Test cases

Building your API
Adopt web standards. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
§ REST
§ JSON
§ OAuth 2

Use proper REST principles
Nouns are good. Verbs are bad.

Other API design considerations
§ HTTP response and error codes
§ Versioning (header vs. URL)
§ Key management & security
§ Hide complexity behind “?”
Poor design: /challenges/open/5
Better design: /challenges?status=open&limit=5
Teach a Dog to REST

Which development language is best?
Language specific REST wrappers for Force.com as well as tools
to make it easier to build well-designed APIs.
§ Ruby
• restforce gem, forcifier gem
• Rocket_pants, Grape
§ Node.js
• nforce package, forcifier-node package
• Actionhero, Restify, Express
§ Java
• Play!, Jersey

Apex REST Services vs. REST API
The REST API is great for interacting with records while Apex
REST Services can encapsulate numerous operations into a
single request.
§ Design to run as quickly as possible
§ Handoff long running requests to asynchronous processes

Let’s build an API!

User authentication
Authentication your API with Force.com
§ Single “shared” user
§ Named user
• Security
• Chatter
• Audit trail & history
• Record ownership

Best practices
§ Prototype with REST API then port to Apex REST
§ Caching is cheap and fast with Memcache and redis
§ Sync to local datastore with Cloudconnect.com
§ Think about how to version Apex classes, triggers and workflows

Development tools
§ Workbench
§ Runscope for debuging, testing and sharing API calls
§ Chrome extensions: Postman, REST Console
§ IODocs for documenting and testing calls

Force.com Gotchas!
§ Salesforce.com maintenance downtime
§ Hard to write unit tests with sandbox environments
§ Sandbox refreshes

Jeff Douglas
CloudSpokes Platform
Architect,
@jeffdonthemic