Salesforce.com package.xml generator

Usage

groovy GeneratePackage.groovy [path/to/config.json] srcDirectory/ path/to/package.xml

This command will use the Salesforce.com deployment package structure in the directory srcDirectory/ and will generate a package.xml file in path/to/package.xml based on the configuration found in path/to/config.json, which is optional. In case path/to/config.json is not provided, the script will look for the file conf/config.json.

The config file defines what sub-directories in srcDirectory/ will be taking into account to build the package.xml and how the different package.xml types are created, i.e. by using asterisk or using the content of the sub-directories to generate the members of the type tag.

Example of Use

This script can be useful to deploy to Salesforce.com just the changes in the metadata done after last deployment. If in your company you keep the metadata development in git, and after every deployment there is a tag that identifies the code that has been deployed, i.e: v1.23.

In this scenario, you can run the following commands to generate a delta deployment:

mkdir delta
git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r HEAD v1.23 | xargs -I {} cp --parents {} delta/

This command would create a Salesforce.com delta deployment in delta/src/ including only the files changed between the the last deployment (tagged with v1.23) and the HEAD of the current branch. With that we can run the the script to obtain the package.xml file:

groovy GeneratePackage.groovy delta/src delta/src/package.xml

This will generate the package.xml file in delta/src/ and now we just need to deploy it, maybe with ant.

Configuration

The Salesforce.com package.xml generator uses a configuration file (conf/config.json by default) to determine what sub-directories to add to the package.xml file if they are present in the source directory, and how the types are added to the package.xml (by adding an asterisk or by adding all the files in the sub-directory as members), like this:

This piece of configuration will create a CustomApplication type, with an asterisk as the only member:

	"applications" : {
		"xmlTag" : "CustomApplication",
		"acceptsAsterisk" : true
	}

On the other hand, this piece of configuration will create a CustomObject type with as many members as *.objects exist in the objects/ directory (it uses the filename without the extension):

	"objects" : {
		"xmlTag" : "CustomObject",
		"acceptsAsterisk" : false,
		"extension" : ".object"
	}

In the case the items are organised in folders, like it is the case of Dashboards, this configuration adds the folder to the member.

There is a third option of configuration, and it is useful for the Documents:

	"documents" : {
		"xmlTag" : "Document",
		"acceptsAsterisk" : false,
		"excludeExtension" : "-meta.xml"
	}

This option adds all the files under document/ directory which don't finish in -meta.xml, including the folders where they're organised.