Archive for August 2011
Logging into Salesforce through the Web Interface
You Shall Not Pass!
There are a number of ways to authenticate with the Force.com Platform and I thought I’d create a few lightning posts documenting my findings for each.
The first method in this series will be logging in through the web interface. There are 2 sites that you would hit in order to authenticate:
- http://login.salesforce.com – for Developer Edition and Production Orgs
- http://test.salesforce.com – for all other sandboxes
If you’re not able to log in with a username and password that you know is correct then the first port of call is to check that you’re using the correct URL above. I’ve seen many developers forget to hit ‘enter’ after swapping “test” for “login” (or vice versa) and then being puzzled because their credentials still didn’t work so don’t forget (okay by “many developers” I actually mean me).
There’s also a neat trick that’s quite well-known and can be used to log you in automatically based on bookmarked URLs. All you need to do is append 2 URL parameters onto the appropriate environment HTTPS URL e.g. I could create a bookmark with the URL https://test.salesforce.com?un=wes@cloud-corporation.com&pw=abc123 where:
- un = your username for that environment
- pw = your password for that username
Pro-tip: Make sure that the URL is using HTTPS.
If you exclusively use Chrome you might want to use the Force.com Logins plug-in which will save you some hassle.
Ruby, Rails & RVM woes
I’ve had several issues over the past day pertaining to Ruby, Rails and RVM and all of them were caused by one silly thing.
Problem 1: You can’t swap between Ruby versions using RVM
If you can’t swap between Ruby versions that you know you’ve installed then you’ve probably installed something using “sudo”. It is highly recommended that you install & use RVM in the single user mode as this is easiest. If you do this then all the versions of Ruby etc. that you install will be installed in your home directory (usually ~/.rvm/) instead of system wide and this negates a whole bunch of complexities. Running this command will tell you which ruby executable you’re using:
which ruby
If the executable is not sitting in your home directory e.g. it’s in /usr/local/bin then you’re in a spot of bother. The easiest way I’ve found to fix this is to clear out all the RVM gemsets and start again. I’ve found that I needed to run:
rm -fr ~/.rvm rm -fr ~/.bin
Be careful with the second command. I’d have a look around that directory before deleting it to make sure it’s not being used by anything else.
Having wiped out these directory you can now using RVM to install fresh versions of Ruby.
Problem 2: Running “rails -v” or “rails” throws an error similar to “`report_activate_error’: Could not find RubyGem rails’
This is assuming you don’t have the first problem or that you’ve corrected it. It’s also most likely to occur if you’re using RVM. The cause here is that you’re using a local version of RVM to manage your Ruby versions but have installed Rails using “sudo” so that it’s been installed system wide. The solution is simple, remove the “sudo” so that rails is installed just for your currently active gemset.
gem install rails --version x.y.z
The Silver Lining 