ApexSharp Salesforce C# API

A Inteligent C# Wrapper for Salesforce REST API

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Project

Build an advanced but easy-to-use C# SDK that can efficiently interact with Salesforce APIs. My current plan is to explore its capabilities and determine how it can best support the following APIs.

• SObjects

• Bulk V2

• Tooling

• Data Cloud

• Helper

Goals

• Take advantage of .NET 8 and the latest features developed up to C# 12: Currently, .NET 8 is in beta, and the release is in November, according to Microsoft.

• LINQ, instead of dealing with SOQL.

• Take advantage of async / await in C#

• Hide the complexity: For example Select<Contact>() will return all the contact objects. the API chooses the best path based on the number of records; this can be 1 record or 100 million.

• Since joining Salesforce a few years ago, I have gained extensive knowledge about how the Salesforce API works. Definitely making use of this expertise.

• Speed-wise, it's almost identical to making raw REST/JSON calls.

Use some of the most used Nuget Opensource libraries

• Serilog
• RestSharp
• JSON.Net
• Noda Time
• Fluent Validation
• Lamar IoC
• PostSharp Metalama
• Polly
• Benchmark .Net

Read Records - Select

// Get all the Contact objects and all the fields on each Contact object
List<Contact> contactList = con.Select<Contact>();

The REST calls and pagination is hidden from the developer. If there are 50K records and if you do not put a limit, you will get all 50K records.

For example, the above code most of us will assume it will generate the following SOQL

SELECT FIELDS(ALL) FROM Contact 

But that is not valid as there is a limit of 200 records when you get all the fields. To overcome this, first, we make the following call to find the record count.

SELECT Count(Id) FROM Contact 

If the record count is less than 200, the following SOQL will be run

SELECT FIELDS(ALL) FROM Contact LIMIT 200

If the record count is between 200 and 2200, multiple calls are made

SELECT FIELDS(ALL) FROM Contact LIMIT 200 OFFSET 0
SELECT FIELDS(ALL) FROM Contact LIMIT 200 OFFSET 200
SELECT FIELDS(ALL) FROM Contact LIMIT 200 OFFSET 400
....
SELECT FIELDS(ALL) FROM Contact LIMIT 200 OFFSET 2000

If it's more than 2200 records, things get a bit complicated.

1. Since we will know all the field names, we will create a SOQL with all the field names

2. Then query 2000 records at a time and append to a List

3. The user will get ALL the records.

4. If we have more than 2200 records, we will make multiple queries.

Keep in Simple

List<InsertReply> reply = Insert<Contact>(List<Contact> contactList();

Safety

Salesforce allocates a limit on the API use per 24-hour time frame. If you run out of them, it's bad news, as many things that depend on the REST API will stop working. Due to this, you want to check before making a Rest call.

Due to this, we support an estimate on large CRUD operations. For example, the following code shows how you can get an estimate on the API usage, how many API calls are left and then add a 20% margin and make the call

// Get the API calls needed for this query
var apiUsage = connection.Select<Contact>().ApiUsage();
// Get the API calls left
var apiLeft = connection.ApiLeft();
// Add a 20% safety net
apiLeft = apiLeft * 1.2;
// Only run the query if it's safe
if( apiLeft > API usage) {
	// SELECT FIELDS(ALL) FROM Contact
	List<Contact> contactList = connection.Select<Contact>();
}

Partial Return

var contactList = connection.Select<Contact>((x => x.Id))
.Where(x => x.Name == "Jay").StopAt(0.9);

By adding StopAt(), you are telling when to stop. In the above example, once the API left number reaches 90%, we will not make any more API calls and will return what has been received.

Todo: How will the developer know this is a partial return?

Lazy Loading

Contact contactById = connection.Select<Contact>(contact.Id);
Console.WriteLine(contactById.Account.Name);
Console.WriteLine(contactById.AccountId);

1. Let us say we want to retrieve a Contact object and want to find the name of the user who created it

2. Note Console.WriteLine(contactById.Account.Name), CreatedBy returns a User object. When this is called, we make another REST call to get details about the Name field in the Account object.

3. However Console.WriteLine(contactById.AccountId) does not require another REST call, as the first call would have obtained that value

This way, we prevent calling the entire object tree when the Contact object is retrieved.

However, the following will make only a single call and only retrieve the fields we have specified.

List<ContactDTO> contactDtoList = connection.Select<Contact, ContactDTO>((x, y) => new ContactDTO
{
    ContactName = x.Name,
    AccountName = x.Account.Name
});

Child Depth Level

Contact contactById = connection.Select<Contact>(contact.Id).DepthLevel(5);

You can specify how deep your query should go. The SDK is smart enough not to go into a recursive more.

Insert

Salesforce object inserts API supports multiple ways of inserting an object or list of objects. How inserts are done, and errors are managed is abstracted from the developer. The three methods are

// Insert a single Contact object
var reply = Insert<Contact>(contact);
	
// Insert a list of Contact objects with a batch size of 200
List<Reply> replyListOne = Insert<Contact>(contactList);

// Insert a list of Contacts with a custom batch size; 
// batch size can't be larger than 200
List<Reply> replyListTwo = Insert<Contact>(contactList, batchSize);

In Salesforce, you can pass up to 200 objects in a single REST call. By default, if you pass a list of 1000 Contact objects, we split it into 5 REST calls of 200 records each. All REST calls are made concurrently.

Optionally you can specify a smaller batch size. For example, f you pass a list of 1000 Contact objects and a batch size of 10, we will make 100 REST calls concurrently

In testing, we have found smaller batch size will lead to faster performance. The downside is you will be using your API limits.

Here is an example of inserting a Contact object with Two Fields.

Insert Type	Time in Millisecond	# of API Calls
One Record	1,801	1
1000 Records, Batch Size 200	6,604	5
1000 Records, Batch Size 10	155	100

One of the biggest issues is error management. If you try inserting 1M records at 200 batch size this is 5000 REST calls, which can be made concurrently. Unfortunately, the whole insert process going fine is slim.

One of the issues with this approach is that we will get "ServerError" from Salesforce, and the records will not be inserted, updated, or deleted.

For every insert we keep track of and failed inserts are retried, When this happens we will use Polly to retry, and if that fails, log all the failed objects.

When this happens we will use Polly to retry, and if that fails, log all the failed objects.

A local database such as LiteDb will be used. The way this will work is each object will be given a GUID, and if there is a failure, those objects will be saved to LiteDB. Please feel free to start a conversation on the GitHub discussion section here.

The same logic is applied to Delete and Update

SELECT

// SELECT Id FROM Contact
connection.Select<Contact>(x => x.Id).Run();
// SELECT Id, Name FROM Contact
connection.Select<Contact>(x => new { x.Id, x.Name }).Run();
// SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE Name = 'Jay'
connection.Select<Contact>((x => x.Id)).Where(x => x.Name == "Jay").Run();
// SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE MailingLatitude = 5.5
connection.Select<Contact>((x => x.Id)).Where(x => x.MailingLatitude == 5.5).Run();
// SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE MailingLatitude NOT 5.5
connection.Select<Contact>((x => x.Id)).Where(x => x.MailingLatitude != 5.5).Run();
// SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE MailingLatitude <= 5
connection.Select<Contact>((x => x.Id)).Where(x => x.MailingLatitude <= 5.0).Run();
// SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE MailingLatitude >= 5
connection.Select<Contact>((x => x.Id)).Where(x => x.MailingLatitude >= 5.0).Run();
// SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE MailingLatitude > 5
connection.Select<Contact>((x => x.Id)).Where(x => x.MailingLatitude > 5.0).Run();
// SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE MailingLatitude < 5
connection.Select<Contact>((x => x.Id)).Where(x => x.MailingLatitude < 5.0).Run();
// SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE Name = 'Jay' OR Name = 'John'
connection.Select<Contact>((x => x.Id)).Where(x => x.Name == "Jay" || x.Name == "John").Run();
// SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE Name = 'Jay' NOT DoNotCall = True
connection.Select<Contact>((x => x.Id)).Where(x => x.Name == "Jay" != x.DoNotCall == true).Run();
// SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE Name = 'Jay' AND DoNotCall = True
connection.Select<Contact>((x => x.Id)).Where(x => x.Name == "Jay" && x.DoNotCall == true).Run();
// SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE Name = 'Jay' AND CreatedBy.Name = 'Jay'
connection.Select<Contact>(x => x.Id).Where(x => x.Name == "Jay" && x.CreatedBy.Name == "Jay").Run();
// SELECT FIELDS(ALL) FROM Contact WHERE CreatedBy.Name == "Jay"
connection.Select<Contact>(x => x.Id).Where(x => x.CreatedBy.Name == "Jay").Run();
// SELECT Id, Name, CreatedById FROM  Contact
connection.Select<Contact>(x => new { x.Id, x.Name, x.CreatedById }).Run();

Raw SELECT

// SELECT Id FROM Contact
connection.Select<Contact>("SELECT Id FROM Contact").Run();
// SELECT Id FROM Contact
connection.Select("SELECT Id FROM Contact");
// SELECT FIELDS(ALL) FROM Contact WHERE Id='003Ho00001ftlLyIAI' LIMIT 1
connection.SelectById<Contact>("003Ho00001ftlLyIAI").Run();        

• Line 2: The ability to submit raw SOQL and get the results bound to a class

• Line 4: Same as above, but you get the actual JSON

• Line 6: Get a single record by its ID

Upsert

Send a list of objects; if the Id is null or empty, it will be an insert. If we have an Id on the record it will be an update

// Upsert single record
var reply = connection.Upsert<Contact>(contact);
	
// Upsert a list of objects. This will set the default batch size to 200 records
List<Reply> replyListOne = connection.Upsert<Contact>(contactList);

// Upsert a list of Contacts with a custom batch size; 
// Batch size can't be larger than 200
List<Reply> replyListTwo = connection.Upsert<Contact>(contactList, batchSize);

Delete

// Delete all records
var reply = connection.Delete<Contact>();

// Pass a list of record ID's to be deleted
var reply = connection.Delete<Contact>(List<string> Id);

// Delete a single record given an Id
var reply = connection.Delete<Contact>(String Id);

Bulk API

List<Contact> contactList = new List<Contact>();
contactList.Add(new Contact(){Name="Jay1"});
contactList.Add(new Contact(){Name="Jay2"});
contactList.Add(new Contact(){Name="Jay3"});
		
var bulkInsertStatus = BulkInsert<Contact>(contactList);

if(bulkInsertStatus.GetJobInfo().State == "JobComplete") {
	var SuccessfulResults = bulkInsertStatus.GetSuccessfulResults();
	var failedResults = bulkInsertStatus.GetFailedResults();
	var unprocessedrecords = bulkInsertStatus.GetUnprocessedrecords();
}

1. If you have a very large data set, you can use Bulk API 2.0
2. C# objects to CSV conversion are done automatically

3. If the CSV File is more than 100MB, the files will be automatically chunked

4. Parent / Child relationships are automatically mapped from the C# object

5. GZip Support for responses in the background

6. You can pass a Delegate callback to get incremental updates on your bulk API request

Convenience Methods

Exception Handling

Feedback

To provide feedback or ask questions, kindly utilize the GitHub discussion function. Follow this link to access the GitHub discussion and leave your comments. Your feedback is highly appreciated.

Go to the GitHub discussion