DevOps for Salesforce: Build, test, and streamline data pipelines to simplify development in Salesforce

Salesforce development is different from other stack development platforms. Everything you need to develop an application is available on the cloud. There is no need to install any software. The main drawback of sandbox-based development is that a sandbox does not provide versioning of your code. So, if someone overwrites your code, then you cannot get a previous version of the code. This causes a big mess in large projects where multiple developers are working on the project.

We will start development by creating our own Salesforce Developer Edition account for free. Register with Salesforce for a free-tier account and test it out. Here are some guidelines for new Salesforce users to create their own Salesforce application using https://developer.salesforce.com/signup:

There are two ways to deploy code to test in a sandbox or production environment:

A sandbox is similar to the dev, test, and stage environments in other technology stacks. They are mainly used for the development of Salesforce applications and testing of newly developed features. We do not want to make changes in the production environment directly without testing it thoroughly. So we need these different types of sandboxes; depending on what we can do with them, we can choose which one to use. Some sandboxes only have metadata from production, and some may have both metadata and data in them. Sandboxes also vary in size. Let's see how they differ.

A sandbox is used to develop and test applications. Depending on the type of sandbox you use, it may also include a copy of the data from your production organization. A sandbox is completely isolated from the production organization, so any changes the developers make won't compromise the data, applications, or day-to-day activities of the other users in the production organization. It is ideal for developing complex customizations to minimize risks.

There are various types of sandboxes:

First, we will go through how we can use Eclipse for Salesforce application development. We will start from the very basic steps, such as installing Eclipse and Force.com IDE, followed by configuring Git with Eclipse.

Installing Eclipse Neon with the Force.com IDE plugin

We will start by installing Eclipse on the developer machine. To install Eclipse, you should have a minimum of Java 6 installed. If it is not installed, you can install it from the official website at https://java.com/en/download/.

We are going to install Eclipse Neon. Java version 7 is required for Eclipse Neon.

The following are the prerequisites for a development environment for Salesforce:

• Operating systems:
  • Windows 7, 8, or 10
  • macOS 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, 10.10, or 10.11
  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or 14.04 LTS
• Java SE Development Kit (JDK), Runtime Environment 8 or later (Java download page).

The installation steps are as follows:

1. Eclipse 4.5 or later is recommended. Go to the download site at https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/.
2. Select the appropriate executable package for the operating system you are using. 
3. Once the download is complete, you can proceed with Eclipse installation. Double-click on the .exe file if you are using Windows.
4. The Eclipse IDE for Java Developers distribution is the recommended installer.
5. Choose an installation folder for Eclipse and click on INSTALL. It will take some time to install Eclipse.
6. After completing the installation, launch Eclipse. Select the workspace for Eclipse.
7. You will see the welcome page for Eclipse.

Now we have installed Eclipse on our system, we can move forward with the installation of Force.com IDE.

 

The following are the steps to install Force.com IDE:

1. Launch Eclipse, go to the Help option and choose the Install New Software option from the drop-down list:

2. Click Add.
3. In the Add Repository dialog, set the name to Force.com IDE and the location to https://developer.salesforce.com/media/force-ide/eclipse45:

4. Click OK.
5. If you are not using Java 8, then deselect Show only the latest versions of available software, and it will show an older version of the plugin.
6. Eclipse will show a list of all available plugins. Select the Force.com IDE plugin, and then click Next.
7. In the Install Details dialog, click Next.
8. Review the licenses, accept the terms, and click Finish.
9. Eclipse starts downloading Force.com IDE and installs it and other required dependencies. Once the installation is completed, you need to restart Eclipse to reflect the changes. Click Yes.

10. When Eclipse restarts, select Window | Open Perspective | Other. Select Force.com and then click OK:

We are done with setting up the Salesforce development environment in Eclipse.

Configuring a Force.com project in Eclipse

We have a Salesforce application, and we want Salesforce code in the local workspace we just created using Force.com IDE:

1. Right-click on the Package Explorer area, then choose New and select Force.com Project:

2. Create a new Force.com project. You need to provide details about your project. Enter the Project name and Organization Settings details for connection: 
   • Username: Provide a username and append the sandbox name to it.
   • Password: Provide a password for the given username.
   • Security Token: You need to provide a security token for the sandbox.
   • Environment: Choose the environment you are using, such as sandbox or Production Edition:

3. Once you have filled in all the details, click Next.

We will get all the code in Eclipse from Salesforce. Now, whatever changes a developer makes in Eclipse will be in sync with the sandbox being used.

Following traditional methods for the deployment of Salesforce projects is time-consuming. Also, the major problem is with versioning of code, which causes issues in every environment. A particular feature may run perfectly in a Developer sandbox, but we might face issues in production. Tracking every change done by developers and administrators is very difficult, so the miscommunication between teams can result in failed deployments or delay in product delivery.

We can consider scenario where a particular feature needs to be launched as soon as possible and we are facing deployment issues. We may not able to resolve it in time and this will impact on our customers and business as well. We will face challenges such as the following:

We need to streamline all these issues and have one solution which will solve almost all problems; here, DevOps comes into the picture!!

Yes, we can apply DevOps practice to Salesforce projects and achieve continuous integration and deployment, and continuous testing for Salesforce projects as well. In DevOps, we have a rich toolset that can also be used for Salesforce projects.

Let's try to cover this step by step. The first and most important consideration is how we can achieve versioning in Salesforce where the Salesforce sandbox itself doesn't keep versions of code stored. A Salesforce sandbox stores only a minimal amount of information about changes, such as which user made the previous change and its timestamp. Obviously, this information is not enough to achieve full versioning. We can use a very popular source code management tool, Git for Salesforce projects, where the sandbox will be in sync with the Eclipse workspace and Git repository. 

Salesforce provides a very useful tool for migration of metadata from a local repository to a sandbox, which is the Force.com Migration Tool. The Force.com Migration Tool is an Ant-based tool for moving metadata from a sandbox to local repositories. With the Force.com Migration Tool, we can perform operations such as retrieving metadata from a sandbox and deploying metadata to a sandbox.

Using this Force.com Migration Tool with Jenkins, we can build our continuous integration jobs. Jenkins is an automation server that allows us to automate tasks such as building, testing, and deploying software on a particular environment. Jenkins is written in Java programming language and allows us to create continuous integration jobs. In later chapters, we will see how to use the Force.com Migration Tool with Jenkins and automate continuous integration tasks in Salesforce projects.

Finding issues can be like finding a needle in haystack. We need to track issues in our project. There are many  applications present that we can use in our projects, such as Bug Tracker and Jira. This helps us to get an idea about issues in our project and in which environment they are present; also, it helps us be on track and stay updated. We will see some of these applications in detail in later chapters. We will also see how we can integrate these tools and have a CI-CD pipeline for Salesforce projects.

Achieving continuous testing with Salesforce is possible with the help of tools such as Selenium and Qualitia. Selenium is a testing framework that is used to test web applications. Qualitia is a scriptless automation tool that helps to create test cases without writing scripts/code.

Do you still have doubts about applying DevOps to Salesforce? The answer can be positive or negative, but, wait, do not mark it as your final answer because you have still to read the following chapters, where we will try to provide a clearer idea about using DevOps tools for Salesforce projects. Also, we will cover some examples and real-time scenarios about DevOps and Salesforce, so stay tuned!

In this chapter, we got an overview of the traditional Salesforce development process, which environments are used for Salesforce development, and how we can set up a Salesforce development environment with Eclipse and Force.com IDE. Also we looked into sandboxes and the types of sandboxes used in Salesforce projects, and how they differ from each other.

We also got some information about traditional deployment methods used for Salesforce projects, such as change sets and the Force.com Migration Tool and discussed which method is suitable for small and large projects. We also looked into technical and business challenges in Salesforce.

In the next chapter, we will see how we can apply DevOps for Salesforce projects. We will compare other technical stacks with Salesforce and see how applying DevOps to Salesforce is different than DevOps in other technical stacks. We will also discuss various ways to apply DevOps to Salesforce.