Creating flows for an API (Part 1)

• If you're not already connected to your Salesforce account, find the name and password of your Salesforce account.
  Note: To create a free test account in Salesforce rather than use your business account, register for a Developer account from the URL https://developer.salesforce.com instead of a Trial account. If you connect to App Connect with a Trial account, the Salesforce events do not work.

1. On the Dashboard, click Create > Flows for an API.
2. Enter a name that identifies the purpose of your API (for example, Customer API).

   

3. In the Model name field, enter a name for your model that reflects the type of object that your API works with.

   The API flow that you're going to build creates a customer in Salesforce. Therefore, in the Model name field, type Customer.

4. Click Create model. The Customer model panel is displayed. This panel contains a Properties tab and an Operations tab.

   You first set properties on the Properties tab to define the structure of the object that the API works with.

   1. You want the API to create, update, and retrieve a customer. Therefore, use the following properties to identify customers.
      CustomerID
FirstName
LastName
Email

      Add these properties to the Customer model. (To add the first property, type the name in the field provided. To add another property to the list, click Add property (+)).

      

      A valid property name has the following characteristics:

      • Each property name must be unique.
      • A property name can't contain spaces, but you can use an underscore character (_) to separate words.
      • It must contain only letters, numbers, or the underscore character.
      • It must contain at least 2 characters.
      • It must begin with a letter or an underscore.
      Tip: Either type in the name of a property or click Select properties from applications to choose properties from one or more of the applications that you're connected to.
   2. By default, the first property that you add (CustomerID) is selected as the ID property. Because you want your flow to return a customer ID when you create the customer object, leave this property as the ID property.
      Note: Your flow must return the ID property when it creates an object. Or the ID property must be sent in a request to update or retrieve an object by using its ID. You can set only one property as the ID property.

      You can create more models by clicking Create model. To delete a model, select Delete model from the menu.
5. To define how the API interacts with the object, click Operations. You can add operations to achieve the following actions.
   • Create an object.
   • Retrieve an object by using its unique ID or by using a filter.
   • Update or create an object by using its ID or a filter. If the object exists, update it. If the object doesn't exist, create it.
   1. Add the Create Customer operation to the Customer model. (Click in the Select an operation to add list, then select Create Customer.)

      

      Note: You can define your own operations, by clicking Add a custom operation. Note the following restrictions if you decide to use this option:

      • The operation name can't be a keyword.
      • The operation name can't be one of the following keywords: create, updateOrCreate, all, updateAttributes, update, updateAll, upsertWithWhere, replaceOrCreate, replaceById, destroy, destroyAll, executeAssembly.
      • The query parameter can't be the same as the model ID.

      For more information, see Create your own custom HTTP operations on API flows.

      Next, create a flow that defines how the Create Customer operation works.

6. Click Implement flow. You see a basic flow in the flow editor with a Request node, a Response node, and an add node icon to add one or more target applications. Notice the structure of the Request body example, which is constructed from the properties in your model with some sample data.

   

7. To add the target application to the flow, click (+).
8. Select Salesforce > Contacts > Create contact.

   (If App Connect isn't already connected to Salesforce, specify the name and password of your Salesforce account.)

9. Map the fields from the request into the Salesforce Create contact action as follows.
   • Click in Account ID and click Insert a mapping . Then select CustomerID from the Available inputs list.
   • In Last Name, type last, then select LastName from the list.
   • In First Name, type fir, then select FirstName from the list.
   • In Email, type em, then select Email from the list.

   

10. You can also add some conditional logic to your flow. For example, if you want your flow to do different things for different conditions, you can add one or more ‘If’ nodes to your flow. For more information, see Adding conditional logic to a flow.
11. Click the Response node in the flow to define the response that is returned when the operation completes successfully. Map the available fields from the Salesforce Create contact action to the response as follows.
    • For the mandatory response field CustomerID, map the Salesforce field Contact ID. If needed, map other fields to return their values in the response.

      

      Note: In the Response header section, you can choose your own response code mapping. The following response codes are returned for the different operations:

      • Create operations return a response code of 201 (record created).
      • Retrieve operations return a response code of 200 (record retrieved).
      • Replace or create operations return a response code of 200 (record replaced) or 201 (record created).
12. Click Done to return to your model.
13. From the options menu (⋮), click Start API.

    

You can test the flow for your API in the API portal, or by using your preferred method to invoke an API, such as by using cURL.

You created an API. In flow tiles on the App Connect Dashboard, the API icon identifies flows for APIs. You can start and stop them in the same way as any other flow. You can open an API while it's running, but you must stop it before you can edit it.

To find out how to retrieve and update Salesforce contacts by using the same API, see Creating flows for an API (Part 2).