Video Tutorial - Building APIs with Salesforce.com Apex REST Services

I've had this video queued up for a few days now as I was waiting for the Apex REST API webinar. I didn't want to steal Sandeep Bhanot's andAlex Toussaint's thunder. Their webinar was very informative and packed full of code! It should be available here any day now for your viewing pleasure.

Over at CloudSpokes we've been running development challenges with Apex REST services for quite awhile now. To facilitate future challenges I put together a video showing everything (yes, everything) you need to know to get started building applications with Apex REST services. The tutorial below walks you through the entire process of building our Members service. It shows you how to structure your services, how to use the new REST classes, and how to use the Apigee Console for Salesforce.com to test your services. The Apigee console even handles the OAuth for you!! Why write your own Java or Rails client app to test your classes? I've even published the entire code for the Members service so you can use it as a template.

You can find the code here at github.

If you want some real-world experience using Apex REST services, hop on over to CloudSpokes and participate in some of our challenges to rebuild our site using Apex REST services. Prizes range from $500 - $1000 and we have a large number of challenges available!

So here's how to get started:

  1. Sign up for a new developer org atdeveloper.force.com. All new orgs are now enabled with the Apex REST services so you can get started right away without waiting for the feature to get enabled.
  2. Take a peek at theForce.com REST API site for tutorials, code snippets, webinars and documentation. You can even post questions to the message boards for quick answers to your problems.
  3. Watch this awesome video by our friends at Apigee entitledRESTful API Design: Teach a Dog to REST. We love the design principles.
  4. Watch the video above for a quick tutorial services and thencheck out the code.
  5. Use theApigee Console for Salesforce.com as your client application and start writing some code!