Salesforce Integration Guide

Integrate your application with Salesforce to sync contacts, leads, and opportunities securely and efficiently.

Overview

This guide walks you through creating a connected app in Salesforce, authenticating via OAuth 2.0, and using the REST API to exchange data.

Prerequisites

Salesforce account with System Administrator privileges
API enabled (Enterprise, Unlimited, or Developer edition)
Node.js ≥ 14 or any environment supporting HTTPS requests

Setup Steps

Create a Connected App:
1. Log in to Salesforce → Setup → App Manager → New Connected App
2. Enter App Name and Contact Email
3. Enable OAuth Settings and add https://yourapp.com/oauth/callback as a callback URL
4. Select scopes: Full access (full), Perform requests on your behalf at any time (refresh_token, offline_access)
5. Save – note the generated Consumer Key and Consumer Secret

Configure environment variables:

SALESFORCE_CLIENT_ID=YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY
SALESFORCE_CLIENT_SECRET=YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET
SALESFORCE_REDIRECT_URI=https://yourapp.com/oauth/callback

Install required libraries:
```
npm install axios qs
```

Authentication (OAuth 2.0)

Redirect users to Salesforce to authorize your app, then exchange the authorization code for an access token.

https://login.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/authorize?response_type=code&client_id=$SALESFORCE_CLIENT_ID&redirect_uri=$SALESFORCE_REDIRECT_URI&scope=full%20refresh_token

Backend token exchange (Node.js example):

const axios = require('axios');
const qs = require('qs');

async function getToken(code) {
  const data = qs.stringify({
    grant_type: 'authorization_code',
    code,
    client_id: process.env.SALESFORCE_CLIENT_ID,
    client_secret: process.env.SALESFORCE_CLIENT_SECRET,
    redirect_uri: process.env.SALESFORCE_REDIRECT_URI
  });
  const resp = await axios.post('https://login.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/token', data);
  return resp.data; // { access_token, refresh_token, instance_url, … }
}

Sample Code – Create a Contact

async function createContact(token, instanceUrl, contact) {
  const url = \`\${instanceUrl}/services/data/v57.0/sobjects/Contact\`;
  const resp = await axios.post(url, contact, {
    headers: { Authorization: \`Bearer \${token}\` }
  });
  return resp.data; // Id of the new contact
}

// Example usage
const tokenInfo = await getToken('AUTH_CODE');
const newContact = {
  FirstName: 'Jane',
  LastName: 'Doe',
  Email: 'jane.doe@example.com'
};
const result = await createContact(tokenInfo.access_token, tokenInfo.instance_url, newContact);
console.log('Created Contact Id:', result.id);

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Possible Cause	Resolution
401 Unauthorized	Expired or invalid access token	Refresh the token using the refresh_token endpoint or re‑authenticate.
Invalid client_id	Incorrect Consumer Key in env vars	Verify the Consumer Key matches the Connected App.
Redirect URI mismatch	Callback URL not whitelisted	Add the exact URL to the Connected App OAuth settings.