Searching contacts by Rest API

Question

In my app(outside Salesforce) I want to show search results from Salesforce contacts. The search is based on contact name. While I can do it by using SOQL query using Rest API, I'm worried about hitting API limits.

Is there an alternative API for search which doesn't have limits. If not, what's the best way to solve this?

Thanks

Answer 1

Since Salesforce is a shared platform, I don't think it likely that you'll find something that you could use that doesn't have some sort of limit attached.

A SOQL query through the REST API sounds like the right tool for the job here.

In addition to David's answer, if you do end up running into the API call limit, you can always use caching (on your external (to Salesforce) server) to reduce the API load. There are a multitude of caching strategies you could use (which trade API call load, complexity, and data freshness).

For example, if you were to run the API call once and simply cache the results for 5 minutes, then the maximum number of calls that you would make in any given 24-hour period is 24 * 60 / 5 = 288 (less than 2% of the minimum number of calls you can make)

Answer 2

The Salesforce REST API call limit is quite high, starting at

15,000 + (number of licenses X calls per license type)

where each Salesforce license in your org is worth a minimum of 1,000 additional API calls. The exact calculation depends upon your edition.

I would only imagine this would be a problem if you were using Salesforce as a backend for a moderately popular public-facing website. If you have reviewed the limits and believe there's a genuine risk to your application, more detail in your question could help guide a specific answer.

There is no publicly-accessible Salesforce API that does not have limits associated with it of some kind or another*.

• Other than Heroku Connect, as Jayant rightly reminds me - but Heroku Connect is a tool you can use to sync data into Heroku and then build your API there, rather than an API that you can expose publicly or call directly from your application.