Salesforce DX is a new feature introduced by Salesforce.com that helps developers to build applications using Source Driven development Workflow. Using Source driven Development, the source code is organised into artifacts and can be kept in a version control systems (VCS) such as GitHub, Team Foundation Service (TFS), Subversion (SVN) and in any other source control system.
Introduction to Salesforce DX
Salesforce Development Experience (DX) was introduced in Winter ’18 release. Before Salesforce DX, Salesforce production Org is the source for code, Configurations and customisation. It is very difficult to coordinate team, difficult to automate testing, difficult to roll-back releases and to create separate version modules. Now, with the release Salesforce now offers an incredibly easy and end to end development process, it improves team development and collaboration and provides automated testing.
Salesforce CLI
Salesforce CLI is a single Command Line Interface used to create and manage Scratch Orgs, Push and pull code and configuration from source control to Salesforce scratch Orgs. Using Salesforce CLI, we can load sample datasets into scratch Orgs, can assign permission sets.
- Learn how to Install Salesforce DX CLI.
Scratch Orgs
Scratch Org is a dedicated, configurable and temporary org which can be set up in a just few minutes. These Scratch Orgs are built from source code and metadata. A developer can creates as many number of Scratch Orgs and deleted for each specific Salesforce DX project.
Salesforce DX project
Salesforce DX project can be named as a local directory structure which contains artifacts, Salesforce DX metadata and configuration files to create Scratch Orgs. A project can be created using Salesforce CLI (command line interface), during project creation following are the thing created for you.
- Base project configuration file.
- Sample scratch definition files and directories.
- We create default “package” directory.
Salesforce DX live Debugging
Real-time Apex debugger extension helps to debugVisual Studio Code.
Benefits
- Reduce the cost of Live server debugging license within Salesforce ORG
- Reduced troubleshooting issues.
- Team collaboration.
- Devops automation
- Reactive and fast troubleshooting live Salesforce org data.
Steps for implementation
- Create scratch org in Salesforce Developer Extension platform.
- Checkout resources in MavensMate app.
- Open VS editor.
- Configure live server debugging in launch.json file. For EG – type – “launch”, request – “launch program”, program – “current salesforce directory classpath.”
- Use debugging keys to operate the outcome
Conclusion
In the following Salesforce tutorials, we cover how to enable developer hub in your Salesforce organisation, Installing Salesforce Developer Experience CLI and different Salesforce DX commands.