Is there a way to download Content Documents from Salesforce using any Programming Language?

Question

I am trying to find a way to download all the content documents related to the Account object and place the downloaded documents under the corresponding Account Name. I tried using Tab Save and similar chrome extensions to download the documents but they don't help with organizing the files in their respective account folders.

Really appreciate your help on this!

"yes" Not very helpful, is it? it'll boil down to logging in calling Salesforce API with right query, that part is language-agnostic. Do you have any preferences? C#, python, PHP... all have SF libraries for easy connectivity. Anything that can send http requests will be fine, soap or rest... What have you tried, have you seen documentation for ContentDocument, ContentDocumentLink, ContentVersion — eyescream, Jan 18 '23 at 19:05

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 19 '23 at 21:54

https://pypi.org/project/simple-salesforce/ is popular choice. Read up on the various login options including how to get to a sandbox.

You'll need to experiment with right query first, something like this should be good start

select id, name,
    (select contentdocument.LatestPublishedVersion.Title, 
    contentdocument.LatestPublishedVersion.FileExtension, 
    contentdocument.LatestPublishedVersion.VersionData
    from contentdocumentlinks)
from account
where id = '0017000000Lg8WgAAJ'

When called via REST API in my developer edition it returns account + 3 attachments

[
  {
    "attributes": {
      "type": "Account",
      "url": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/Account/0017000000Lg8WgAAJ"
    },
    "Id": "0017000000Lg8WgAAJ",
    "Name": "University of Arizona",
    "ContentDocumentLinks": {
      "totalSize": 3,
      "done": true,
      "records": [
        {
          "attributes": {
            "type": "ContentDocumentLink",
            "url": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/ContentDocumentLink/06A4u00000jMtEHEA0"
          },
          "ContentDocument": {
            "attributes": {
              "type": "ContentDocument",
              "url": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/ContentDocument/0694u00000VJqPmAAL"
            },
            "LatestPublishedVersion": {
              "attributes": {
                "type": "ContentVersion",
                "url": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/ContentVersion/0684u00000WWgsIAAT"
              },
              "Title": "apex-07L3a00001NVoMZEA1",
              "FileExtension": "log",
              "VersionData": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/ContentVersion/0684u00000WWgsIAAT/VersionData"
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "attributes": {
            "type": "ContentDocumentLink",
            "url": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/ContentDocumentLink/06A4u00000jMtFrEAK"
          },
          "ContentDocument": {
            "attributes": {
              "type": "ContentDocument",
              "url": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/ContentDocument/0694u00000VJqQjAAL"
            },
            "LatestPublishedVersion": {
              "attributes": {
                "type": "ContentVersion",
                "url": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/ContentVersion/0684u00000WWgtKAAT"
              },
              "Title": "combinepdf",
              "FileExtension": "pdf",
              "VersionData": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/ContentVersion/0684u00000WWgtKAAT/VersionData"
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "attributes": {
            "type": "ContentDocumentLink",
            "url": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/ContentDocumentLink/06A4u00000jMtGkEAK"
          },
          "ContentDocument": {
            "attributes": {
              "type": "ContentDocument",
              "url": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/ContentDocument/0694u00000VJqRhAAL"
            },
            "LatestPublishedVersion": {
              "attributes": {
                "type": "ContentVersion",
                "url": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/ContentVersion/0684u00000WWguFAAT"
              },
              "Title": "Capture",
              "FileExtension": "png",
              "VersionData": "/services/data/v56.0/sobjects/ContentVersion/0684u00000WWguFAAT/VersionData"
            }
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
]

This should be enough info to create the folder name and for each file - determine the filename+extension. The only remaining problem is actual payload, you can see that VersionData is just some url instead of say base64-encoded payload. See my other answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/60284736/313628 for explanation. https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/q/300845/799 is neat too.

Anyway - iterating over that JSON fetching the raw payload, creating files...

Something like this (I'm sure it's naive, no null checks, I'm not well-versed in python)

from simple_salesforce import Salesforce

sf = Salesforce(username='user@example.com', password='hunter2', security_token='')
data = sf.query("""select id, name,
    (select contentdocument.LatestPublishedVersion.Title, 
    contentdocument.LatestPublishedVersion.FileExtension, 
    contentdocument.LatestPublishedVersion.VersionData
    from contentdocumentlinks)
from account
where id = '0017000000Lg8WgAAJ'""")

#print(results)

for row in data['records']:
    print(row['Name'])
    for doc in row['ContentDocumentLinks']['records']:
        d = doc['ContentDocument']['LatestPublishedVersion']
        print("   " + d['Title'] + "." + d['FileExtension'])
        response = sf._call_salesforce(method='GET', url = sf.base_url + d['VersionData'].split(".0/")[1])
        print(response)
        #print(response.content)

outputs

University of Arizona
   apex-07L3a00001NVoMZEA1.log
<Response [200]>
   combinepdf.pdf
<Response [200]>
   Capture.png
<Response [200]>

Is there a way to download Content Documents from Salesforce using any Programming Language?

1 Answers1