In an attempt to make things easier for us developers, the Developer Relations group has created a nice little tool called the Salesforce API Explorer.
What It Includes Now
The first thing you should know about this tool is that it is still in Developer Preview and the team that created it is actively seeking feedback on how it can be improved. You can submit feedback right from the Send us Feedback link at the top.
As of this writing, there are only the following two API’s featured here:
- Force.com REST API
- Marketing Cloud REST API
How You Can Help
Remember when I said this was still in Preview mode? Well, you can easily vote on which API’s will be included next by clicking the like button underneath the API’s listed in the “Which API’s would you like to see here next?” section. Please take the time to go through the list and vote for which ones you would like to see appear next. Come on. You can’t complain about a lack of good documentation without taking the time to be part of a solution.
Why It is So Cool
This Explorer tool is not only cool because of the fact that it will list all the API’s in one place in a nice readable way. But, it is VERY cool when you consider the nice “Try it now” feature that lets you see the results of executing any of the API calls against your developer org. You just need to provide credentials for your org.
You will then select a Resource, such as Account and then an endpoint, such as FindAccountById. Not only does this show you all the documentation you need for that endpoint, but you can try it out by doing the following:
- Click Try it Now
- Enter any path parameters (if needed), such as the Account ID
- Click Execute
- A Live response appears on the right
Boom! You don’t have to go into workbench. You can do everything you need right here in the explorer tool. Cool, right?
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