Transitioning from RForcecom

Steven M. Mortimer

2018-03-12

While writing the salesforcer package we were keenly aware that many folks are already using the RForcecom package to connect to Salesforce. In order to foster adoption and switching between the packages salesforcer replicates the functionality of many RForcecom functions so that you will only need to swap out library(RForcecom) for library(salesforcer) and still have your production tested scripts perform as usual.

Authentication

salesforcer supports OAuth 2.0 authentication which is preferred, but for backward compatibility provides the username-password authentication routine implemented by RForcecom. Here is an example running the function from each of the packages side-by-side and producing the same result.

# the RForcecom way
session1 <- RForcecom::rforcecom.login(username, paste0(password, security_token), 
                                       apiVersion=getOption("salesforcer.api_version"))
session1['sessionID'] <- "{MASKED}"
session1
#>                      sessionID                    instanceURL 
#>                     "{MASKED}" "https://na50.salesforce.com/" 
#>                     apiVersion 
#>                         "42.0"

# replicated in salesforcer package
session2 <- salesforcer::rforcecom.login(username, paste0(password, security_token), 
                                         apiVersion=getOption("salesforcer.api_version"))
session2['sessionID'] <- "{MASKED}"
session2
#>                      sessionID                    instanceURL 
#>                     "{MASKED}" "https://na50.salesforce.com/" 
#>                     apiVersion 
#>                         "42.0"

Note that we must set the API version here because calls to session will not create a new sessionId and then we are stuck with version 35.0 (the default from RForcecom::rforcecom.login). Some functions in salesforcer implement API calls that are only available after version 35.0.

CRUD Operations

“CRUD” operations (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) in the RForcecom package only operate on one record at a time. One benefit to using the salesforcer package is that these operations will accept a named vector (one record) or an entire data.frame or tbl_df of records to churn through. However, rest assured that the replicated functions behave exactly the same way if you are hesitant to making the switch.

object <- "Contact"
fields <- c(FirstName="Test", LastName="Contact-Create-Compatibility")

# the RForcecom way
result1 <- RForcecom::rforcecom.create(session, objectName=object, fields)
result1
#>                   id success
#> 1 0036A00000SnwvTQAR    true

# replicated in salesforcer package
result2 <- salesforcer::rforcecom.create(session, objectName=object, fields)
result2
#>                   id success
#> 1 0036A00000SnwvYQAR    true

Here is an example showing the reduction in code of using salesforcer if you would like to create multiple records.

n <- 2
new_contacts <- tibble(FirstName = rep("Test", n),
                       LastName = paste0("Contact-Create-", 1:n))

# the RForcecom way
rforcecom_results <- NULL
for(i in 1:nrow(new_contacts)){
  temp <- RForcecom::rforcecom.create(session, 
                                      objectName = "Contact", 
                                      fields = unlist(slice(new_contacts,i)))
  rforcecom_results <- bind_rows(rforcecom_results, temp)
}
rforcecom_results
#>                   id success
#> 1 0036A00000SnwvdQAB    true
#> 2 0036A00000SnwviQAB    true

# the better way in salesforcer to do multiple records
salesforcer_results <- sf_create(new_contacts, object_name="Contact")
salesforcer_results
#> # A tibble: 2 x 2
#>   id                 success
#>   <chr>              <chr>  
#> 1 0036A00000SnwvnQAB true   
#> 2 0036A00000SnwvoQAB true

Query

salesforcer also has better printing and type-casting when returning query result thanks to features of the readr package.

this_soql <- "SELECT Id, Email FROM Contact LIMIT 5"

# the RForcecom way
result1 <- RForcecom::rforcecom.query(session, soqlQuery = this_soql)
result1
#>                   Id
#> 1 0036A00000SncIGQAZ
#> 2 0036A00000SncIHQAZ
#> 3 0036A00000RUqb0QAD
#> 4 0036A00000RUqedQAD
#> 5 0036A00000RUqeeQAD

# replicated in salesforcer package
result2 <- salesforcer::rforcecom.query(session, soqlQuery = this_soql)
result2
#> # A tibble: 5 x 2
#>   Id                 Email
#> * <chr>              <lgl>
#> 1 0036A00000SncIGQAZ NA   
#> 2 0036A00000SncIHQAZ NA   
#> 3 0036A00000RUqb0QAD NA   
#> 4 0036A00000RUqedQAD NA   
#> 5 0036A00000RUqeeQAD NA

# the better way in salesforcer to query
salesforcer_results <- sf_query(this_soql)
salesforcer_results
#> # A tibble: 5 x 2
#>   Id                 Email
#> * <chr>              <lgl>
#> 1 0036A00000SncIGQAZ NA   
#> 2 0036A00000SncIHQAZ NA   
#> 3 0036A00000RUqb0QAD NA   
#> 4 0036A00000RUqedQAD NA   
#> 5 0036A00000RUqeeQAD NA

In the future more features will be migrated from RForcecom to make the transition as seamless as possible.