Installing and testing your package

It is possible to automate some of the processes using the Salesforce Metadata API and associated tools, such as the Salesforce Migration Toolkit (available from the Tools menu under Setup), which can be run from the popular Apache Ant scripting environment. This can be useful if you want to automate the deployment of your packages to customers or test orgs. In the final chapter of this book, we will study Ant scripts in more detail.

As an aid to performing this from Ant, a custom Ant task can be found in the sample code related to this chapter (see /lib/antsalesforce.xml). The following is a /build.xml Ant script (also included in the chapter code) to uninstall and reinstall the package. Note that the installation will also upgrade a package if the package is already installed. The following is the Ant script:

<project name="FormulaForce" 
   xmlns:sf="antlib:com.salesforce" basedir=".">

  <!--  Downloaded from Salesforce Tools page under Setup -->
  <typedef 
    uri="antlib:com.salesforce" 
    resource="com/salesforce/antlib.xml" 
    classpath="${basedir}/lib/ant-salesforce.jar"/>

  <!-- Import macros to install/uninstall packages -->
 <import file="${basedir}/lib/ant-salesforce.xml"/>
  <target name="package.installdemo">
 
    <uninstallPackage 
       namespace="yournamespace"   
       username="${sf.username}" 
       password="${sf.password}"/> 
    <installPackage
       namespace="yournamespace"
       version="1.0"
       username="${sf.username}"
       password="${sf.password}"/>
  </target>
</project>

You can try the preceding example with your testing org by replacing the namespace attribute values with the namespace you entered earlier in this chapter. Enter the following commands, all on one line, from the folder that contains the build.xml file:

ant package.installdemo -Dsf.username=testorgusername -Dsf.password=testorgpasswordtestorgtoken