Consuming RESTful web services is quite a common topic currently. Many of the trendy microservices just provide a RESTful API which must then be consumed from the UI layer.
Salesforce provides a rather complete UI for their services, but they also provide excellent hooks for developers to build custom UIs or tools, and Vaadin Framework can be used at the UI layer. In a recent webinar, together with Salesforce Developer Evangelist René Winkelmeyer, we wanted to emphasize this possibility, but also to give some generic tips about using RESTful web services.
In the webinar we discussed the different ways of how you can consume REST services in Java apps and also how to tackle tricky things like authentication. As an example, we built a simple Vaadin based web app. It authenticates to Salesforce using OAuth 2, and then uses private data, fetched via Salesforce’s REST endpoints, and displays it in a Vaadin UI.
If you want some tips on how to get started with consuming RESTful services or integrating Salesforce data into your Vaadin application, watch the webinar and see the examples we prepared!
Also see the forum thread with links to examples.
PS. Note that REST is not the only way to access your data from Salesforce. With plain Java apps, like Vaadin apps, it might in many cases be simpler to use the SOAP approach.