Getting Started with the Salesforce Command Line

Command Line

Every day is a command line day for me these days, and it’s incredibly fun, addictive and easier than you think. In the now infamous words of Mr Peter Chittum:

“Do Not Fear the Command Line”

Of course, I am talking a bit more than just Command Lines in general here – I am talking the Salesforce CLI. But what is the Salesforce CLI?

“The Salesforce CLI is a powerful command line interface that simplifies development and build automation when working with your Salesforce org. “

Yes the Salesforce CLI is at the heart of the new Salesforce Developer Experience – Salesforce DX or SFDX for short – but did you know that it has a life of its own and can be used with or without SFDX and Scratch Orgs?

On a daily basis, I am performing a number of admin and development tasks across all the different org types – so stay tuned you admins, this will be something for you too, we guarantee it!

Over the coming weeks (or months, or as long as it takes…) we will be sharing videos covering as many aspects of the Salesforce CLI, including sharing some useful tips and tricks which we have learnt along the way.

Here are some other useful links to keep you company throughout this series:

Download the SFDX CLI from here

Official Documentation

Trailhead Quickstart

Do Not Fear the Command Line

In today’s session we are learning the following:

  • Viewing/listing all available CLI commands
  • Connecting to a Developer Org
  • Connecting to a Sandbox Org
  • Opening Orgs insanely quickly
  • Setting and changing an alias
  • Setting up a basic bash_profile alias for rapid CLI usage

Sound good? Then watch the video now:

Enjoy that? Then stay tuned for more! Here’s what you can expect to see coming up in future posts and videos:

  • Running SOQL queries – executing a SOQL query and dumping the data out to CSV is a doddle and extremely useful
  • Saying goodbye to the Data Loader with insanely easy data loading
  • Running Anonymous Apex – executing Apex in the dev console is laborious and annoying at best, but now imagine building up your own little library of Apex snippets which you can quickly throw at any org
  • Run Apex tests and now need the coverage for each class? That’s easier said than done, but the CLI can help
  • Grabbing logs and viewing locally …you may not have realised just how much you needed this one
  • Tailing and streaming logs, I call this one the icing on the cake, so watch out for it!

Whet your appetite for more? We’ll be back with more soon!

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