LINQ to Salesforce Data Cloud Data

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the Salesforce Data Cloud via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Salesforce Data Cloud. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData Salesforce Data Cloud Data Source".

4. Enter your data source connection information.

   Salesforce Data Cloud supports authentication via the OAuth standard.

   OAuth

   Set to OAuth.

   Desktop Applications

   CData provides an embedded OAuth application that simplifies authentication at the desktop.

   You can also authenticate from the desktop via a custom OAuth application, which you configure and register at the Salesforce Data Cloud console. For further information, see Creating a Custom OAuth App in the Help documentation.

   Before you connect, set these properties:

   • : GETANDREFRESH. You can use to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the .
   • (custom applications only): The Client ID assigned when you registered your custom OAuth application.
   • (custom applications only): The Client Secret assigned when you registered your custom OAuth application.

   When you connect, the driver opens Salesforce Data Cloud's OAuth endpoint in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions to the application.

   The driver then completes the OAuth process as follows:

   • Extracts the access token from the callback URL.
   • Obtains a new access token when the old one expires.
   • Saves OAuth values in so that they persist across connections.

   For other OAuth methods, including Web Applications and Headless Machines, refer to the Help documentation.

   Below is a typical connection string:

   InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;

👁 Required connection properties for the data source. (QuickBooks is shown.)

5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting SalesforceDataCloudEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select commands. For example:

SalesforceDataCloudEntities context = new SalesforceDataCloudEntities();

var accountQuery = from account in context.Account
 select account;

foreach (var result in accountQuery) {
 Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.[Account ID]);
}

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.