SalesForce is an interesting beast. You gotta work within its limits, and it is great within them. As soon as you want to venture outside of the normal flow, things get complicated.
They suck into SalesForce, but never out – it’s designed as a lobster trap for your information.
Weirdly, there’s not much on the SalesForce AppExchange that helps you easily back up your data on site. There are some tools that help you easily back up to another cloud, but little that helps you get your data back within your own walls.
Still, there’s a little layer over the SalesForce API in Python called simple-salesforce. Here’s a quick script I threw together to help put all your data into csv files.
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| from simple_salesforce import Salesforce, SalesforceMalformedRequest | |
| from argparse import ArgumentParser | |
| from csv import DictWriter | |
| from datetime import date | |
| from pathlib import Path | |
| production_instance = 'yourinstance.salesforce.com' | |
| parser = ArgumentParser(description="Backs up all Salesforce objects to csv files") | |
| parser.add_argument("username", help="User to authenticate as. Should be part of an 'integration_user' profile or some profile with no ip range restriction") | |
| parser.add_argument("password", help="Password for the user") | |
| parser.add_argument("security_token", help="Any API authenticating user needs to supply a security_token. You must log in as the user to get the security token from their profile") | |
| parser.add_argument("instance", help="The instance to connect to") | |
| parser.add_argument("datadir", help="The directory to store csv files in") | |
| parser.add_argument("--objectNames", help="Space separated names of SalesForce objects or by default we backup all queryable objects", nargs='*') | |
| args = parser.parse_args() | |
| #create a subdirectory with todays date | |
| datapath = Path(args.datadir) / date.today().isoformat() | |
| try: | |
| datapath.mkdir(parents=True) #in python 3.5 we can switch to using exist_ok=True | |
| except FileExistsError: | |
| pass | |
| #log into salesforce | |
| sf = Salesforce(username=args.username,password=args.password, security_token=args.security_token, sandbox=(production_instance!=args.instance), instance=args.instance) | |
| #get a list of queryable object names we will need to backup | |
| if args.objectNames: | |
| names = args.objectNames | |
| else: | |
| #get a description of our global salesforce instance, see layout: | |
| # https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/dome_describeGlobal.htm | |
| description = sf.describe() | |
| names = [obj['name'] for obj in description['sobjects'] if obj['queryable']] | |
| #for every object we'll need all the fields it has that are exportable. | |
| for name in names: | |
| salesforceObject = sf.__getattr__(name) | |
| # so get a list of the object fields for this object. | |
| fieldNames = [field['name'] for field in salesforceObject.describe()['fields']] | |
| # then build a SOQL query against that object and do a query_all | |
| try: | |
| results = sf.query_all( "SELECT " + ", ".join(fieldNames) + " FROM " + name )['records'] | |
| except SalesforceMalformedRequest as e: | |
| # ignore objects with rules about getting queried. | |
| continue | |
| outputfile = datapath / (name+".csv") | |
| with outputfile.open(mode='w', encoding='utf_8_sig') as csvfile: | |
| writer = DictWriter(csvfile,fieldnames=fieldNames) | |
| writer.writeheader() | |
| for row in results: | |
| # each row has a strange attributes key we don't want | |
| row.pop('attributes',None) | |
| writer.writerow(row) | |
| """ | |
| This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain. | |
| Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or | |
| distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled | |
| binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any | |
| means. | |
| In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors | |
| of this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the | |
| software to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit | |
| of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and | |
| successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of | |
| relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to this | |
| software under copyright law. | |
| THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, | |
| EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF | |
| MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. | |
| IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR | |
| OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, | |
| ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR | |
| OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. | |
| For more information, please refer to <http://unlicense.org> | |
| """ |
by But wait, there's more
This work by MattK is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International