Building a Web API to display salesforce.com objects

Brief introduction

The Web API is a fast-growing business channel that can help your business enter new markets and attract new customers and partners. They can also help you explore innovation from a large developer community, not just the developers of your company.

Because the Web APIs display critical business assets and services, such as product catalogs or phone lists, they are like external people to your business. They should be self-describing and easy to use. They should also use the representational state Transfer (REST) architecture style so that they can be easily invoked from browsers or mobile devices.

With IBM WebSphere Cast Iron Web API Services, you can assemble and display APIs with just a few clicks. You can also analyze the usage of your Web APIs through the provided analytics and use community hooks to socialize the Web API community in the branded developer portal. This article guides you through the step-by-step use of the IBM WebSphere Cast Iron Web API to create a Web API and to create contacts in the Salesforce.com Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) by calling the Web API.

Prerequisite

The main goal of this article is API developers. This article contains detailed steps for creating a sample Web API, so even beginners should be able to do it. However, the transcendental knowledge of JavaScript Object notation (JSON) and REST will help to increase the understanding of the material.

To implement the examples in this article, you need to:

A workstation with a standard Internet browser (Google Chrome 18 or later, Mozilla Firefox 10 or later, or Internet Explorer 9 or later)

An Internet connection

A valid Cast Iron Web API admin ID and login credentials (you can sign up for a free trial version)

A valid salesforce.com account and login credentials (you can register a developer account).

Creating and testing the Web API

Imagine a business that uses Salesforce.com to store its CRM information, but only employees of the company can access it. The enterprise wants to display a WEB API that allows application developers to create innovative mobile applications that can access the salesforce.com environment. For example, they can create an application, and if the customer wants a sales rep to contact them, they can add their own contacts directly to Salesforce.com. To do this, follow the step-by-step instructions provided in this article to create a salesforce.com Web API and test it, which shows a resource named Create_contact.

Open https://webapi.castiron.com in the browser and start the Cast Iron Web API Services.

Click Sign in in the upper-right corner, enter your credentials in the window, and then click Sign in, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Log on to the Cast Iron Web API Services

On the Getting Started with Web API page, click the Create or APIs menu item at the top to create a new API, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Create a new API