In a previous article Salesforce API – Mortgage Banking Technology | Origination Strategy Consulting (takefiveconsulting.com), we covered the fundamentals of Salesforce API.
This article discusses the SOAP API which is a commonly used Data API. While other APIs let us do things like customize page layouts or build custom development tools, the data APIs helps to manipulate salesforce data. Let’s dive into the details of SOAP API.
SOAP API
• SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol.
• It uses a WSDL (Web Services Description Language) file to define parameters for accessing data. It tells exactly how to interact with an API.
• The WSDL is an XML (Extensible markup language which is similar to HTML but without predefined tags.) document. SOAP API only supports XML format.
• It is synchronous.
• Authenticate with the SOAP login call.
• Allow operations on upto 200 records at a time.
• A Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file provides a definition of the web service, and can be used to automate interaction with the service.
How to use SOAP API?
• Salesforce provides two different SOAP API WSDLs. One is Enterprise WSDL which is org specific. The WSDL files generated from two orgs will be different. The enterprise WSDL file is a strongly typed representation of your org’s data. It provides information about your schema, data types, and fields to your development environment. This WSDL changes if custom fields or custom objects are added to, renamed, or removed from, your org’s Salesforce configuration.
• Partner WSDL is not org specific. It is loosely typed and doesn’t change based on an org’s specific configuration and hence in use with many Salesforce orgs.
• To generate Enterprise WSDL, navigate to Setup-API-Enterprise WSDL- Click on Generate Enterprise WSDL.
• A WSDL will be generated. Right click and save it somewhere in the computer as an XML file. This can be used further for soap integrations. SOAP projects can be created by loading the XML so created in the SOAP UI application.
• After loading the already saved WSDL file, and clicking on OK, an Exploring Salesforce SOAP API folder appears in the navigator pane on the left side of the screen. Underneath it is an entry called SoapBinding that contains several operations. For Creating a new project from the SOAP UI application, in the SOAP UI application first request for login. An XML request will be generated into which we have to type in the username and password appended with the security token.
• In the response of the login request made, there will be a sessionId which we need to use in all our API requests to Salesforce Org. The response contains a bunch of information about your org and user. Most importantly, it contains your org’s My Domain name/instanceand a session ID that we’ll use to make future requests.
We covered the basics of making requests with SOAP API. The other popular data APIs will be discussed in an upcoming article.
Looking for more information on SOAP API, leave us a message.
Take Five Consulting is a technology company, based in Virginia U.S., that specializes in the Mortgage Banking vertical especially LOS implementation and application development. Take Five Consulting creates and implement mortgage technology and software specifically for Mortgage Industry.
