What's the best gem for calling into a Salesforce org from a Ruby on Rails app?

Question

I am going to be doing some work connecting a Ruby on Rails app into a Salesforce org to create some new data.

Right now there isn't any complex logic, just straight forward data sending into SFDC.

SFDC seems to endorse using: Force.com-Toolkit-for-Ruby, and it looks like it should meet my needs.

I typically develop exclusively inside of SFDC so speak, so I don't use any of the outward facing meta-data apis, etc.

I know that I could use the REST API, however, I wanted to know if anyone has used both of these processes, and which they would recommend:

Force.com Toolkit for Ruby vs. RESTful HTTP Callouts (don't think there are any toolkits/frameworks available yet)

Or if someone has a preferred Ruby->SOAP API GEM

Answer 1

Take a look at the databasedotcom ruby gem. (It works across with Salesforce/Force.com as well.)

It's an amazing wrapper around the REST API. Here is the gem, along with a couple write-ups as well.

https://github.com/heroku/databasedotcom

https://rubygems.org/gems/databasedotcom

http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Accessing_Salesforce_Data_From_Ruby

http://fractastical.com/2011/09/01/getting-started-with-the-databasedotcom-gem/

Answer 2

I suggest you using databasedotcom gem, databasedotcom-rails gem if you are using simple CRUD operations. See a video tutorial here > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXLV_Apw5Sg Yeah one more thing if you want to import a large number of contacts from ms outlook or something then either use the web based tool in salseforce itself or if you want to develop your own application from scratch use salseforce_bulk gem for rails and also check this out > http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/08/12/using-the-force-com-bulk-api/

Answer 3

We are using the databasedotcom gem since a couple of month now. No issues with it.

Answer 4

The databasedotcom is deprecated. Instead try restforce. It is a lightweight ruby client for the Salesforce REST API.

Answer 5

The Sfdc gem is the best one.

http://www.sharealltech.com/articles/5-a-ruby-gem-sfdc-for-the-salesforce-rest-api