Exporting Salesforce Data

A quick tip for myself (as I might need it in the future) and for others searching how to export Salesforce data on a daily basis (example to feed a data mart)...just read on.

The best way is to use SOQL, a SQL like language adopted for Salesforce to query its objects. An even better way is to use a wrapper which combines the power of a scripting language like Python with SOQL.

In fact I use SQLForceForJython, an opensource tool which you can easily integrate with a Jython script. The process is very simple:

1. Download the most recent sqlforce.zip distribution.
2. Add sqlforce.jar to your java CLASSPATH
3. Import the SQLForce module

The following is a script I use to export the Contact table (to be precise, we refer to it as Object in Salesforce):

import SQLForce

session = SQLForce.Session()
session.connect( "PRODUCTION", "james@ttard.info", "password", "security-token" )

for rec in session.selectRecords("SELECT LastName, FirstName, MailingCountry FROM Contact"):
   print rec.LastName, rec.FirstName, rec.MailingCountry

You can filter by the date column and query by a timestamp as you would normally do in SQL to simulate a daily export...