Command line access to force.com #2

In the previous post I showed how to use cURL to login to salesforce.com and execute a query. It required creating a Connected App so you can use OAuth2 to authenticate and authorize. I was immediately asked by a few folks around here about the need to do that and if there was a simpler way to do this. So the good news is, yes, you can use the SOAP API to login and then use the session Id as the OAuth2 token -- it's perfectly fine.

Here is how you would issue a SOAP login request to salesforce.com using cURL without the need to configure anything:

curl -X POST https://test.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/29.0
       -H "Content-Type:text/xml"
       -H "SOAPAction: login"
       -d "<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\" xmlns:urn=\"urn:partner.soap.sforce.com\"><soapenv:Header/><soapenv:Body><urn:login><urn:username>YOUR_USERNAME_HERE</urn:username><urn:password>YOUR_PASSWORD_PLUS_SECURITY_TOKEN_HERE</urn:password></urn:login></soapenv:Body></soapenv:Envelope>"

Note that the above command must be in a single line. 

Now you should get a response back in XML with a bunch of details and among them the key fields to grab are the serverUrl and sessionId. The serverUrl will be of the form: https://XYZ.cs12.my.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/29.0/00DV000000YYYYY
Just use the hostname part of the url and append /services/data/v29.0/query?q=your_query along with the sessionId as the Bearer token and you are good to go. The same query command as in the previous post should work fine with these values:

curl https://XYZ.cs12.my.salesforce.com/services/data/v29.0/query?q=Select+Name+From+Account+Limit+5 -H "Authorization: Bearer 00DV000000XXXXX!ARsAQNuDPT9Bhz9FPQFf.DZEUqATv7qbBIFc60YBOy3dvQEVEGYq4Q6iO379NYL5oeWW5yWGeBMfvrUYtyoYYYYYYY.PYFK"

The results are returned in JSON format, exactly like before!

Have fun!