format in the Force.com CLI

Question

I'm trying to export accounts to a csv file using the Force.com CLI tool. I keep getting and Unexpected Token error.

$ force query SELECT Id, Name FROM Account format:csv

ERROR at Row:1:Column:35

unexpected token: :

The format command was demoed at Dreamforce during the developer keynote. I find it odd that the command would not be available 4 months later.

I have tried multiple ways of using format with similiar results. --format:csv [format:csv] etc. I even tried json.

I'm using the latest release of the CLI.

Answer 1

I don't see it in the source in query.go in the runQuery method:

func runQuery(cmd *Command, args []string) {
    force, _ := ActiveForce()
    if len(args) < 1 {
        ErrorAndExit("must specify a query")
    }
    var query = ""
    if args[len(args)-1] == "format:json" {
        query = strings.Join(args[:len(args)-1], " ")
    } else {
        query = strings.Join(args, " ")
    }
    records, err := force.Query(query)
    if err != nil {
        ErrorAndExit(err.Error())
    } else {
        if args[len(args)-1] == "format:json" {
            d, err := json.MarshalIndent(records, "", " ")
            if err != nil {
                ErrorAndExit(err.Error())
            }
            fmt.Println(string(d))
        } else {
            DisplayForceRecords(records)
        }
    }
}

It looks like it just handles the format:json arg, but it does specify csv in the help and you can see it in the help text in the query.go file as well.

Maybe whatever was demoed was in some separate branch or something. Hopefully it gets added in. I was just thinking of a use case. :)

If you want you can download the source and hack it yourself. Just blogged about that here. I can confirm that format:json works with that as expected - look very closely at the featured image on my blog. ;)

Answer 2

$ force query "SELECT Sales_Order__c, Name FROM Opportunity" --format:csv

Answer 3

I find it helpful to have the SOQL in a text file, and then use ` and cat to inject it into the command:

force query "`cat mysoql.txt`" --format:csv >myresults.csv 

Answer 4

The positional argument for the query result format after the query is deprecated as of v0.23.0.

force query now supports a standard option for --format (or -f):

force query --format csv SELECT Id, Name FROM Account