How to call Salesforce REST API from external web forms

Question

I am a bit confused. The requirement is that we need to create a REST API in Salesforce(Apex class) that has one POST method. Right now, I have been testing it with POSTMAN tool in 2 steps:

1. Making a POST request first with username, password, client_id, client_secret(that are coming from connected app in Salesforce), grant_type to receive access token.
2. Then I make another POST request in POSTMAN to create a lead in Salesforce, using the access token I received before and the body.

However, the REST API that I have in Salesforce would be called from various different web forms. So once someone fills out the webform, on the backend it would call this REST API in Salesforce and submits lead request.

I am wondering how would that happen since we can't use POSTMAN for that.

Thanks

Answer 1

These "various different web forms" would have to send requests to Salesforce just like Postman does. You'd need two POST calls (one for login, one to call the service you've created). It'll be bit out of your control, you provided the SF code and proven it works, now it's for these website developers to pick it up.

What's exactly your question? There are tons of libraries to connect to SF from Java, Python, .NET, PHP... Or they could hand-craft these HTTP messages, just Google for "PHP HTTP POST" or something...

• https://developer.salesforce.com/index.php?title=Getting_Started_with_the_Force.com_Toolkit_for_PHP&oldid=51397
• https://github.com/developerforce/Force.com-Toolkit-for-NET
• https://pypi.org/project/simple-salesforce/ / https://pypi.org/project/salesforce-python/

Depending how much time they'll have they can:

• cache the session id (so they don't call login every time), try to reuse it, call login again only if session id is blank / got "session expired or invalid" error back
• try to batch it somehow (do they need to save these Leads to SF asap or in say hourly intervals is OK? How did YOU write the service, accepts 1 lead or list of records?
• be smart about storing the credentials to SF (some secure way, not hardcoded). Ideally in a way that it's easy to use the integration against sandbox or production changing just 1 config file or environment variables or something like that