MuleSoft for Salesforce Developers: A practitioner's guide to deploying MuleSoft APIs and integrations for Salesforce enterprise solutions

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

MuleSoft for Salesforce Developers

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To the memory of my father, Alphonse, and to my mother, Esther RajaRathinam, for their sacrifices and love.

– Arul Christhuraj Alphonse

To my wife, Ana, for being my biggest supporter, my best friend, and the best life partner I could’ve asked for. To my aunts, Elia and Vero, for believing in me unconditionally and for all of your love. To my mom, Lulu, for all your sacrifices, your long nights when I was sick, your hugs, your tears, your smiles, your warmth, and everything you gave me. Las amo, siempre.

– Alexandra Martinez

To my parents, I truly appreciate your efforts in bringing me up to be a better individual. To my best friend and my favorite human, Dan! I love you! To my little bro, Shubham, for being so mature and supportive.

– Akshata Sawant

Contributors

About the authors

Arul Christhuraj Alphonse works as a senior integration architect at Cognizant. Before working at Cognizant, he also worked at Akmin Technologies, Quinnox, IBM, and TCS. He has over 18 years of experience in the integration and API domain and has designed over 1,000 integrations. His educational qualifications include Master of Computer Applications and Master of Business Administration degrees, and his professional qualifications include MuleSoft Mentor, MuleSoft Certified Integration Architect, MuleSoft Certified Platform Architect, MuleSoft Certified Developer Level 1, and SoftwareAG webMethods Certified Professional. He was born and raised in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, India, and currently lives in Singapore. He shares his knowledge through Udemy and the Tech Lightning YouTube channel.

I thank God because without God I wouldn’t be able to do any of this. I would like to thank my loving and understanding wife, Sahaya Divya, my son, Rithwin, my daughter, Riya, and also my family for their continuous support, patience, and encouragement throughout the long process of writing this book. Big thanks to my team at Cognizant and DFS for being supportive.

Alexandra Martinez is a developer advocate at MuleSoft, creating technical content to enable developers and architects to get started with MuleSoft’s products. Before this, Alex worked as a MuleSoft developer and was part of the MuleSoft community as an Ambassadress and meetup leader for the Toronto, Online Spanish, and Women Who Mule chapters. Alex has more than 10 years of experience in technology and has developed software in other languages, such as Java, Python, and PHP. Born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico, Alexandra’s MuleSoft career was key to moving to a different country, and she currently lives in Niagara Falls, Canada. Alex volunteers at organizations such as Women Who Code and Olascoaga MX to help close the gender gap in STEM careers.

I want to thank my dream team at MuleSoft: Mariana Lemus, Sabrina Marechal, Sabrina Hockett, Isabella Navarro, David Norris, and Meghan Murphy. You have helped me in more ways than you’ll ever know and I really appreciate it. I also want to thank Bits In Glass for changing my life, especially Aaron Wentzell and Graham Fraser for mentoring me.

Akshata Sawant is a developer advocate at MuleSoft. She’s been evangelizing MuleSoft through her blogs, videos, and training sessions. She has around five years of experience as a MuleSoft developer. Apart from this, she's also a MuleSoft Certified Developer and an architect. Akshata has been an active member of the MuleSoft community and is also a former MuleSoft Ambassadress and a meetup leader for the London, Mumbai, and Manchester regions. Her roots go back to Mumbai but she’s currently living her London dream. She’s been a global speaker and mentors women in the integration ecosystem.

I would like to thank my parents, Dan, Shubham, Chetan Parekh Sir, family, and my mentors at Apisero and EPAM for always motivating me. Thanks to all my friends for their honest reviews on my content. Thanks to everyone at Packt for being so patient and Uzma Sherin for trusting me with this book. To my team at MuleSoft and my amazing MuleSoft Community, a big thank you from the bottom of my heart! Ambadnya!

About the reviewers

Gaurav Kheterpal is a well-known name in the Salesforce ecosystem, a Salesforce MVP since 2016, and he holds 40 Salesforce Certifications, 21 Salesforce AP Credentials and 5 MuleSoft Certifications – he is ranked among the top 3 globally certified experts in Salesforce & Mulesoft ecosystems.

Gaurav has been recognized by Salesforce as a Developer Success Story and a Trailblazer. He has delivered several sessions at leading events such as Dreamforce, TrailheaDX, Salesforce World Tour, London’s Calling, and several others. Gaurav is passionate about evangelizing Salesforce and MuleSoft platforms in the broader community.

D Rajesh Kumar is a Lead MuleSoft Integration Architect with 17+ years of extensive experience in the IT industry. For the last 8 years, he has been working on the MuleSoft platform in various domains for end-to-end platform setups, architecture, design and Center for Enablement (C4E) setups and execution. He is a MuleSoft Certified Architect and a MuleSoft Ambassador recognized by MuleSoft for his expertise in Mule. He is currently working for TCS as Solution Architect and previously worked for Infosys, HCL, and Jamcracker.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1:Getting Started with MuleSoft

1

Introduction to APIs and MuleSoft

Understanding the need for an integration tool

Introducing no-code and low-code technologies

Analyzing integrations

Understanding APIs

Reviewing the restaurant analogy

Exploring an API example

Analyzing API components

Listing the benefits of using APIs

Introducing MuleSoft

Listing MuleSoft’s products

Understanding why MuleSoft is useful

Analyzing how MuleSoft helps Salesforce developers

Exploring application networks and the API-led connectivity approach

Understanding what application networks are

Analyzing the API-led connectivity approach

Summary

Questions

Answers

2

Designing Your API

Understanding an API life cycle

Introducing REST, HTTP, and SOAP

REST

HTTP/HTTPS

SOAP

Getting started with OAS and RAML

OAS

RAML

Getting started with API design

URI parameter

Query parameter

API mocking

Best practices and tips

API design naming convention

Optimizing your API design

Summary

Assignments

Questions

Answers

3

Exploring Anypoint Studio

Technical requirements

Downloading and installing Anypoint Studio

Downloading Anypoint Studio

Installing Anypoint Studio

Launching Anypoint Studio

Introducing the Mule Palette

Exploring the Mule project structure

Introducing Mule views and perspectives

Views

Building, running, and testing a Mule application

Building the Mule application

Running the Mule application

Testing the Mule application

Exporting and importing Mule files

Exporting a Mule application as a JAR file

Exporting a Mule application as a filesystem

Importing a Mule application from a JAR file

Importing a Mule application from the filesystem

Updating the theme in Anypoint Studio

Installing software updates in Anypoint Studio

Summary

Questions

Answers

4

Introduction to Core Components

Technical requirements

Getting familiar with a Mule flow

Exploring the types of Mule flow

Understanding the Mule event structure

Core components

Batch

Features of the Batch scope

The batch processing stages

A batch step

The batch aggregator

The batch job

Components

Custom Business Event

Dynamic Evaluate

Idempotent Message Validator

Invalidate Cache

Invalidate Key

Logger

Parse Template

Set Transaction Id

Transform Message

Endpoints

A Scheduler

Error handling

On Error Continue

On Error Propagate

Raise Error

Error Handler

Flow control

Choice

First Successful

Round Robin

Scatter-Gather

Scopes

Async

Cache

Flow

For Each

Parallel For Each

Sub Flow

Try

Until Successful

Transformers

Set Variable

Remove Variable

Set Payload

Summary

Assignments

Questions

Answers

5

All About Anypoint Platform

Technical requirements

Introducing Anypoint Platform

Getting started with Design Center

API Designer

Flow Designer

Introducing Exchange

The public portal

Exploring Runtime Manager

Deploying a Mule application into CloudHub

Managing a Mule application

Runtime Manager alerts

Anypoint VPC – virtual private cloud

Load balancer

Introducing API Manager

Exploring Anypoint Monitoring

Alerts

Log Management

Introducing Anypoint Visualizer

Exploring Access Management

Organization and business groups

Invite user

Roles

Environments

Audit logs

SUBSCRIPTION

Summary

Questions

Answers

Part 2: A Deep Dive into MuleSoft

6

Learning DataWeave

Technical requirements

Introducing DataWeave

Analyzing DataWeave

Diving into a script’s anatomy

Adding comments to your code

Understanding data types

Understanding data formats

Writing DataWeave scripts

Using operators

Creating and using variables

Defining and calling functions

Retrieving data with selectors

Understanding scopes and flow control

Summary

Questions

Answers

7

Transforming with DataWeave

Technical requirements

Understanding modules in DataWeave

Importing modules and functions

Analyzing the existing DataWeave modules

Using the DataWeave core functions

Transforming multiple types

Transforming numbers

Transforming strings

Transforming objects

Transforming arrays

Using the Transform Message component in Anypoint Studio

Exploring the views

Defining metadata

Creating custom modules

Summary

Questions

Answers

8

Building Your Mule Application

Technical requirements

Exploring different types of configuration files

Mule configuration file

Properties file

Project Object Model

Introducing Scheduler

Creating a Mule application with the Scheduler component

Generating a flow using APIkit Router

Creating a Mule application using an API specification

Running and testing a Mule application

Exploring Object Store Connector

Different types of Object Store

Creating a Mule application with Object Store Connector

Summary

Questions

Answers

9

Deploying Your Application

Technical requirements

Getting started with deployment models

Types of deployment models

Choosing the right deployment model

Understanding the different deployment environments

The hybrid model

Deploying your Mule application to CloudHub

Deploying your Mule application on an on-premises server

Building a CI/CD pipeline with MuleSoft

The Mule Maven plugin

Summary

Assignments

Questions

Answers

10

Secure Your API

Technical requirements

The need for API security

API security with MuleSoft

Introducing API Manager

Understanding the capabilities of API Manager

Understanding the API gateway

Policies in MuleSoft

Security

Compliance

Transformation

Quality of service

Custom policies

Implementing API security using policy

API Autodiscovery

Configuring a security policy

The security capabilities of MuleSoft

Anypoint Enterprise Security

Anypoint Security

Anypoint Flex Gateway

Summary

Assignments

Questions

Answers

11

Testing Your Application

Technical requirements

Introduction to testing

Getting familiar with testing tools

Postman

SoapUI

JMeter

Introducing MUnit

Creating a test suite

Exploring the MUnit Test Recorder

Creating a test suite using the Test Recorder

Summary

Assignments

Questions

Answers

Part 3: Integration with Salesforce and Other Connectors

12

MuleSoft Integration with Salesforce

Technical requirements

Exploring Salesforce connectors

Configuring a Salesforce connector

Adding a Salesforce connector

Discovering accelerators and templates for Salesforce

Getting started with accelerators

Exploring templates

Getting started with MuleSoft Composer

Capabilities of MuleSoft Composer

Configuring MuleSoft Composer

Exploring MuleSoft’s integration capabilities with Salesforce

The Bulk API

CDC events

Data analytics tools

Summary

Assignments

Questions

Answers

13

MuleSoft Connectors and Use Cases

Technical requirements

Introducing connectors

Exploring File Connector, FTP Connector, and SFTP Connector

File Connector

FTP Connector

SFTP Connector

Understanding Database Connector and watermarking

Watermarking

Configuring Web Service Consumer Connector

Publishing and subscribing using VM Connector

Operations

Publishing and listening to a message

Exploring JMS Connector

Operations

JMS Connector configuration

Introducing MuleSoft accelerators

Summary

Questions

Answers

14

Best Practices, Tips, and Tricks

Best practices

General best practices

Mule project best practices

Anypoint Platform best practices

Tips and tricks

Summary

Questions

Answers

15

Certification and Interview Tips

Getting MuleSoft certified

Expanding your knowledge with the official training

Developer training

Architect training

Operations training

Contributing to the MuleSoft Community

Expanding your knowledge with MuleSoft meetups

Helping others as a MuleSoft Mentor

Becoming a MuleSoft Ambassador

Getting help with the MuleSoft forums

Passing your interview

Summary

Questions

Answers

Index

Other Books You May Enjoy

Preface

MuleSoft for Salesforce Developers will help you build state-of-the-art enterprise solutions with flexible and scalable integration capabilities using MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform and Anypoint Studio. If you’re a Salesforce developer looking to get started with this useful tool, look no further. This book will get you up to speed in no time, leveling up your integration developer skills.

Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts, practical examples, and self-assessment questions, this essential guide will first introduce you to the fundamentals of MuleSoft and API-led connectivity, before walking you through the API life cycle and the Anypoint Studio IDE. Once you have the IDE set up, you’ll be ready to create Mule applications. We’ll look at the core components of MuleSoft and Anypoint Platform, and before long, you’ll know how to build, transform, secure, test, and deploy applications using the wide range of components available to you. Finally, you’ll learn about using connectors to integrate MuleSoft with Salesforce and fulfill a number of use cases, which will be covered in depth, along with interview and certification tips.

By the end of this book, you will be confident in building MuleSoft integrations at an enterprise scale. Also, it’ll help you to pass the fundamental MuleSoft certification – MuleSoft Certified Developer (MCD) – Level 1.

Who this book is for

This book is aimed at Salesforce developers who want to get started with MuleSoft. There’s an increasing demand for cross-cloud solutions that involve integrating MuleSoft with the core Salesforce platform or one of the Salesforce cloud offerings, such as Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Commerce Cloud. Salesforce architects will also find the concepts covered in the book useful in designing Salesforce solutions.

It’s helpful if you have knowledge/prior experience with any programming language and some basic integration concepts.

Some basic familiarity with Salesforce development and experience with Salesforce APIs is expected – at least SOAP API, REST API, Bulk API, or Streaming API.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introduction to APIs and MuleSoft, covers what no-code and low-code technologies are, what APIs and integrations are, the different MuleSoft products, what application networks are, and what the API-led connectivity approach is.

Chapter 2, Designing Your API, explores the API life cycle and how to create an API specification and fragments using RAML, fundamentals of REST and SOAP API and HTTP protocol, capabilities of API Manager, and API Design best practices.

Chapter 3, Exploring Anypoint Studio, covers how to download Anypoint Studio from the official website, install it on the system, and perform the required configuration. After the installation, we will develop the new Mule application and run it inside Anypoint Studio.

Chapter 4, Introduction to Core Components, covers the basics of a Mule Event, the flow, and the sub-flow. It introduces us to several components, scopes, routers, transformers, and flow controls in Mule. It also examines error handling and batch processing in Mule 4.

Chapter 5, All About Anypoint Platform, delves into the Anypoint Platform components, such as Design Center – API Designer, Exchange, API Manager, Runtime Manager, and Anypoint Monitoring. At the end of this chapter, we will be familiar with how to create an API using Design Center, how to publish the API in Exchange, how to create the API in API Manager to enforce the policies, what Runtime Manager is, and how to monitor applications from Anypoint Platform.

Chapter 6, Learning DataWeave, covers an introduction to DataWeave if you’re new to the language. We discuss what DataWeave is, how scripts are created, how to add comments, and what data types, data formats, operators, variables, functions, selectors, scopes, and conditionals are.

Chapter 7, Transforming with DataWeave, focuses on learning more about the DataWeave modules and some of the most used functions in real life. We also learn about the Transform Message component to use DataWeave in Anypoint Studio.

Chapter 8, Building Your Mule Application, explains how to build a Mule application using different configuration and properties files, and also covers Scheduler Endpoint, the APIkit router, and Object Store.

Chapter 9, Deploying Your Application, explores the different deployment options available in MuleSoft, how to deploy an application to CloudHub, how to download and install a Mule on-premises server, how to deploy a Mule application to an on-premises server, and also how to build a CI/CD pipeline using MuleSoft.

Chapter 10, Secure Your API, covers the need to secure your API with the help of policies, explores the capabilities of API Manager, and more about MuleSoft’s security features.

Chapter 11, Testing Your Application, examines MUnit, MUnitTools, different operations, and how to create test suites and test cases using MUnit. We will also see how MUnit can speed up the development process and the test recorder.

Chapter 12, MuleSoft integration with Salesforce, covers how to leverage the capabilities of MuleSoft to integrate Salesforce with other end-systems. It also covers Salesforce connectors, accelerators, and templates and several capabilities of MuleSoft to make integration easy. It also covers about MuleSoft Composer to simplify integrations.

In the API-based approach, we will access the Salesforce objects via the API to access the information in real time. In the event-based approach, we will listen to the Salesforce topic to receive the message and process it synchronously to the required backend system.

Chapter 13, MuleSoft Connectors and Use Cases, delves into the different modules (File, FTP, SFTP, Database, Slack, SOAP, VM, and JMS) available in MuleSoft. In the File-based modules (File, FTP, and SFTP), we will connect to the system and read the file. We will also send the file through different connectors. In the Database module, we will perform the required connector configuration to a specific database and read/insert records from/to the database. This chapter also covers the different modules, such as Slack, Web Service Consumer (SOAP), VM, and JMS connectors.

Chapter 14, Best Practices, Tips, and Tricks, covers the MuleSoft best practices, guidelines, coding standards, tips, and tricks.

Chapter 15, Certification and Interview Tips, explores the different career paths you can choose in the MuleSoft ecosystem, what the different MuleSoft certifications are and some tips to get certified, what the different available trainings are, how to contribute to the MuleSoft community, and some interview tips for your first MuleSoft position.

To get the most out of this book

You will need a version of Anypoint Studio 7.x installed on your computer – the latest version, if possible. Examples have been tested using Anypoint Studio 7.12 on macOS. However, they should work with future minor version releases too.

You will need a web browser installed on your computer to access Anypoint Platform and the DataWeave Playground. Examples have been tested using Google Chrome on macOS. However, other browsers such as Safari or Firefox should work too.

You will need a REST client application installed on your computer to make requests to the APIs. Examples have been tested using Postman v9 on macOS and Windows. However, other tools such as an advanced REST client or curl should work too.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book’s GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/MuleSoft-for-Salesforce-Developers. If there’s an update to the code, it will be updated in the GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://packt.link/u7ZAp.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in the text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: You want to compare whether b is greater than a or a is greater than or equal to b.

A block of code is set as follows:

a = 1

b = 5

if b > a:

    print(b is greater than a)

else:

    print(a is greater than or equal to b)

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

asyncapi: '2.0.0'

info:

  title: MusicAsyncAPI

  version: '1.0.0'

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: Click on Publish and select the Publish to Exchange option.

Tips or Important Notes

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Part 1:Getting Started with MuleSoft

Part 1 covers an introduction to MuleSoft, Anypoint Platform capabilities, and how to design an API. This part also covers the core components of Anypoint Studio. We will explore various components of Anypoint Platform. At the end of this part, we will be familiar with the features and capabilities of Anypoint Platform and Anypoint Studio. We will also have hands-on experience in designing an API.

The following chapters are included in this part:

Chapter 1, Introduction to APIs and MuleSoft

Chapter 2, Designing Your API

Chapter 3, Exploring Anypoint Studio

Chapter 4, Introduction to Core Components

Chapter 5, All About Anypoint Platform

1

Introduction to APIs and MuleSoft

The world is changing. Technologies keep emerging. There are more needs for technology now than there used to be, and it’s not a coincidence. Earlier, there were simple problems and simple solutions: maybe not the best solutions, but they worked well enough for the needs at the time. Now, we are swamped with different technologies we can choose from to achieve the same goal. We are bombarded with new programming languages, frameworks, and methodologies. What was popular yesterday is obsolete today. How do we keep up?

Before, it was good enough to just have an engineering or computer science degree to be able to thrive in the Information Technology (IT) world. Now, you don’t necessarily need a degree, but you do need to understand the basic terminology or learn the appropriate logic required to create software. A lot of people think this is a skill you are born with, that you either have what it takes to understand programming algorithms and patterns or you’re doomed to never be able to work in IT. This is not true – especially nowadays, in the no-code/low-code era.

Today, we can find mobile applications that do our work for us. There are tools online to help us write, design, paint, sing, and build, even if that is not our strongest suit. Why would programming be any different? This is where technologies such as Salesforce and MuleSoft come into play. The simplicity they’re based on helps you to thrive in this environment even if you don’t come from an IT background.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

No-code and low-code technologies

Integrations

APIs

MuleSoft’s products

Application networks

API-led connectivity approach

Let’s start by understanding the need for an integration tool.

Understanding the need for an integration tool

If you come from a Salesforce background, you might not be 100% familiar with the usefulness of an integration tool such as MuleSoft. Before we dive into MuleSoft, let’s first understand why we need an integration tool and what low-code or no-code technologies are.

Introducing no-code and low-code technologies

Programming and software development have been evolving over the years. At first, programmers needed to manually translate the behavior they wanted into computer code. You needed to study a programming language, practice it, and really polish it to be able to create unimaginable programs. Eventually, this transformed into human-readable words that you could input into the machine and it would automatically know what you meant.

Fast-forward to the year 2022 and you don’t even have to input words for the computer to know what you want to do. Computers are now good enough to work with icons, buttons, or drag-and-drop components. You don’t need to memorize commands; you just need an introduction to the tool and some practice to be proficient in it. What a blessing!

Of course, there might still be some need to write code in order to have more customized behavior that fits into more complex needs for the tool; but code in general, or a programming language, is easier to understand every time. 

Let’s now look into both no-code and low-code technologies in more detail.

No-code technologies

There are some applications that you can use that involve no coding whatsoever. A few examples that come to mind are Trello for project management, Canva for graphic design, or Zapier for integration/automation. You can use them without needing to know a programming language. It’s all done through clicks and configurations.

For example, Zapier and other tools such as If This Then That (IFTTT) are very popular because you only need your browser to access them. There’s no need to install an application on your computer or perform updates to your software. You can simply type the site name into your browser, create an account, and start using it right away. Of course, there is a learning curve to understanding how to use them. But this can be overcome in a matter of hours or days, not years of a professional career. With these kinds of integration tools, there are predefined apps that you can connect to through their Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), such as Google Calendar, GitHub, and Philips Hue. You can create specific triggers to automate your day-to-day work. An example that comes to mind is sending a Slack message as soon as a commit is pushed in GitHub. You can just click through the flow to sign in to your accounts from these different services and you don’t even need to understand how their code works. That is the beauty of no-code technologies.

Low-code technologies

In low-code tools, you can still take advantage of drag and drop, clicks, and configurations, but there might be some coding involved for more precise functionality. However, programming is not the majority of the work. The technology does not revolve around the programming language; rather, it is considered a feature of the overall product. This is the case for Salesforce with Apex and MuleSoft with DataWeave. You can use Salesforce and MuleSoft without the need to use their programming languages, but they are available for you in case you need custom functionality.

We will look into these in more detail later in the book, but if you’re completely new to MuleSoft, picture this: you have a palette of connectors you can choose from. There is a Salesforce connector,