Using force.com from your Heroku apps

Summary

Force.com and Heroku, both part of the Salesforce1 platform, can be connected from Heroku applications through data synchronization or direct API access. Heroku Connect provides point-and-click, two-way synchronization between Force.com and the Postgres database attached to an app, allowing reads and writes in Postgres while changes are copied asynchronously; that latency makes it unsuitable when an immediate Force.com response is required. For synchronous access, open-source client libraries cover Force.com’s SOAP, REST, Streaming, Bulk, and Metadata APIs across languages including Java, Ruby, Node.js, PHP, Python, Objective-C, and Go. The article maps libraries and packages to supported APIs, including restforce and salesforce_bulk for Ruby, nforce for Node.js, simple-salesforce for Python, mobile SDKs, and ForceCLI for scripting SOAP and Metadata operations.

Takeaways

1. 1

   Heroku Connect synchronizes Force.com data with an attached Postgres database in both directions, but writes reach Force.com asynchronously.

2. 2

   Force.com exposes SOAP, REST, Streaming, Bulk, and Metadata APIs for CRUD operations, events, large data transfers, and schema modifications.

3. 3

   Library examples include restforce and salesforce_bulk for Ruby, nforce for Node.js, simple-salesforce for Python, and ForceCLI for SOAP and Metadata scripting.