SOAPUI: Integration Helper for Salesforce

Recently I connected with hundred of developers. While taking to them, I felt that 75% of them were scared when it came to integration. So I thought to write this to make their life bit easier.

If you have a perfect WSDL file, which can be parsed easily in Saleforce, and you are the luckiest one. You can easily use generated wsdl classes for integrating Salesforce with other application. Picture starts when you have wsdl, but Salesforce is unable to parse it because of some constraints. 

Few common issues are:

1. You have wsdl, but that is not in Salesforce supported format.
2. You start modifying the wsdl to make it in Salesforce supported format, but it’s getting too hard and complex.
3. Now you decide to go with HTTP request, but you don’t know the request body format.
4. What you need to set in the request header?
5. You have username and password, but you don’t know how to use that.

Please add your ones if I missed anything above.

SOAPUI: I would highly recommend downloading (http://www.soapui.org/Downloads/latest-release.html) and installing this tool. This allows you to create projects using WSDL files. When you create a project using wsdl, SOAPUI creates separate requests for each operation.

Creating a project in SOAPUI using wsdl

1. Once you have been downloaded and installed SOAPUI, open soapui.
2. Go to File -> New Project
3. Choose your wsdl file and click on okay.
   
4. You will see a new project is created in WSDL and it has all the operations.
5. Select any operation and click on request1. It will show you complete request format.
   
6. Now put your variables in request xml and hit the service.
   
7. Click on Raw tab to see the request and response headers.
   

So now what you have all is:

EndPoint: As shown in screen-shot above

Method: Post

Content-Type: text/xml;charset=UTF-8

SOAP Action: As shown above

Request Body: As shown above

This is all enough to create your HTTP request in Salesforce and hit the endpoint. So how this will be implemented in Salesforce now:

You can create the requestBody string in Salesforce either by using the DOM class or you can also create a direct string like 

String requestBody = ‘<……..></…….>’;

//Request

HttpRequest request = new HttpRequest();

request.setEndpoint(endpoint);

request.setMethod(‘POST’);

request.setHeader('SOAPAction', soapAction);

request.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/xml;charset=UTF-8');

request.setBody(requestBody);

//Response

Http http = new Http();

HttpResponse response = http.send(request);

Now if you wish the parse the response, you can use DOM class to parse that.

If you have credentials and that need to be passed for authorization, then you can use these credentials in SOAPUI as given below:

In Salesforce this will be passed as :

Blob headerValue = Blob.valueOf(username + ':' + password);

String authorizationHeader = 'Basic ' + EncodingUtil.base64Encode(headerValue);

req.setHeader('Authorization', authorizationHeader);

Please do not forget to leave your comments. It will help me to improve the quality in next.

Test Methods: What, Why and How?

I was thinking to write something from a long time and I came up with this today(Finally I am active again on blogger :)).
I am big fan of Salesforce developer community and I daily visit it. Not because of I am expert and can answer all the queries there, but It helps me a lot to increase my knowledge. I learn something new daily from there and implement it in real life(how easy it is).

After seeing various post on community, I realized that some people are not sure about the test methods. Each day I do see 2-3 posts like, how to increase coverage, help in writing test methods, assertion failed and many more. and this encouraged me to write this post.

Let me start now without wasting your time :P.

1. What is test method?
   [Answer]: I hope you all know, but still I would like to share :). Test method is a way to test your functionality from developer perspective. Each time when you deploy your changes to new org, you really can't test everything from UI as it will be time consuming, so test methods are the way to test if everything is working fine without user interface.
2. Why we write test method?
   [Answer]: Suppose you implemented a functionality today and it was successfully deployed. You have test method with all the use cases covered . A month later, new enhancement comes and you implement it. Now you can run your test method to see the impact on existing functionality. 
3. How to write test methods?
   [Answer]: I hope you all already know answer of this, but today I would like to explain this very simple way with a simple program.

Suppose I have a method, which takes marks of Science and Maths subject and returns total.

My method would be something like this:

public class MyController {
 //This method takes science and Maths marks and return total of these
 public Integer sum(Integer m1, Integer m2) {
  
  //return sum of these 2
  return m1 + m2;
 }
}

Now you can see here is, if I pass 50 and 60 in method, results would be 50+60=110.

That is what QA people will be testing from UI.

but we are developer and do everything with code :). 

so as I said, if I pass 50 and 60 in sum method, it should return 50+60=110.

Let's start writing test method

@isTest : This anotation defines that your class is a test class

@isTest
private class Test_MyController {

 //test sum method
 static testMethod void testSUM() {
  //Instantiate controller class
  MyController controller = new MyController();

  //Call Sum method
  Integer sum = controller.sum(50, 60);

  //Expected results is 110 and actual should also be 110
  //Check result
  System.assertEquals(110, sum);
 }
}

and that's all :). Isn't it cool? 

Now anytime you make changes in your controller's SUM method, you can always run the test method to check if there is any impact on existing functionality. Also make sure to keep you test method updated as per the new changes :).

HAPPY CODING :).

Quick Finder for Salesforce

And here the dude is back in town. Here is my new post to make all the developer’s life so easier.

Let me ask you a question here :).
When you are working in browser and if you need to find out any class/page/trigger/component/static resource, then how will you do that?

Let me tell you, how you will do it (Even I am also a advanced developerJ):

1. First Click -> Your Name
2. Second Click ->  Setup
3. Third Click -> Develop
4. Forth Click -> Apex Classes

You are not finished yet.
Now use alphabetical sorting, view more, next page etc. links to find out the exact class. This becomes more irritating when org is very big. So on an average, you need to do at-least 6 clicks to find out a component.

It is really killing time when working on browser directly. So I started working on an application which can do all this in SINGLE CLICK:-O.
Yes, you read this correctly. You can do all this in a single click. App name is Quick Finder for Salesforce.

This application includes a home page component, which you just need to place on your sidebar.

and you are done. Now doesn’t matter on which page you are, if you can see sidebar, you can go to any component at any time.

Just click on the searched result and you will be navigated to appropriate component.

Isn’t it awesome? This app currently supports following component types:

1.       Apex Class

2.       Apex Page

3.       Apex Trigger

4.       Apex Component

5.       Static Resource

Please install this from AppExchange.  Here is the Installation link. Don’t forget to review this after installation.
https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N3000000B3a8hEAB