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hmm, error.
Even though I’m within the dates of the preview as specified here https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.220.0.sfdx_dev.meta/sfdx_dev/sfdx_dev_scratch_orgs_version_selection.htm |
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This is fixed now! (As of 10-Jan) So try again! |
So I start again without the Preview Org and run the command and I have a scratch org.
Open the scratch org with
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sfdx force:source:push |
Then assign the perm set and import the data as per the trailhead module so I can get Dreamhouse app up and running.
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sfdx force:org:open |
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Working on the Scratch Org
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Which brings the metadata down to the source on my local machine. It’s good to do this after every main action you perform so you know that any changes you are making in the org are going to be in Source and therefore in a new Scratch Org. Eg I changed my User Name and pulled source but it did not pull the user details, of course, because that is data.
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Remember you can just use the UP key to re-type the same command again in the CLI terminal. And use UP UP to get to the next most recent command, and keep on going back further in your commands list. |
Issues
I had an issue where the pull command gave me the following error.
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Entity of type 'CustomApplication' named 'Account' cannot be found |
Weird
But this Stack Exchange Post kind of helped, I had to put Account.app in my .forceignore file and then it worked. Weird.
End of the Day
Remember to pull all your source from your org then commit your git and send it to your Bitbucket in the cloud.
I was only doing work in my org and doing pull. But I ended up getting quite stuck (see below), so I think it’s a good idea to push and pull often (but then I don’t know how you handle the things that you can’t store in Scratch Orgs easily, like Connected Apps and things that have a hard coded reference to the Org Name, but that is for another time).
Next Day
When opening VS Code again and trying to log back into the scratch org it was interesting that it wasn’t just connected. All the sandboxes I am connected to are still connected when I do force:org:list. So I had to do
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sfdx force:org:open -u myusername |
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Data Export and Import
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For me for now, I’m just going to forget brokers, and manually deal with Record Types. It’s a cop out, I know, but this project is just to get me started with Scratch Orgs.
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Install an App
Of course you will need to install apps in your Scratch Org. I need to install Doug Ayers Mass Action Scheduler. Thankfully Doug provided the Package IDs on his release page https://github.com/douglascayers-org/sfdx-mass-action-scheduler/wiki/Release-Notes but you can usually see them in the install URLs for the version you are installing.
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sfdx force:package:install --package "04XXXXXXXXXXXX" |
OMG how easy is that! (Of course I don’t know how easy it is to do with all the options you need like restricting profiles, but for regular installs it’s easy).
Doug’s app is one that requires a Connected App and Named Credential set up. So this is going to get difficult when setting up the scratch org again. The Named Credential comes down when I pull the source, but the endpoint is hard coded to the My Domain, which won’t exist in a new scratch org. So the Named Credential will have to go into .forceignore and these steps will have to be done manually. (There could be a way to do this with scripting but I don’t need to know this yet).
Also, the configuration in MAS is data and there is not an easy way to move configs between orgs yet, and it relies on the Named Credential so I will just have to create it each time… there is only one MAS configuration for my demo so that’s fine.
Get a Password
The last thing I need to do for my demo is export data from a report into Excel using Enabler4Excel. For that I need to be able to log into the org using OAuth, and therefore I need a Password. To get a password you do
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sfdx force:user:password:generate |
Interestingly I had to use Sandbox as my OAuth endpoint to login. I thought Developer Orgs were “Production” orgs - maybe scratch orgs are different or maybe because I am using my production org as the Dev Hub. Dunno.
Re-Creating the Scratch Org
So the whole point of the Scratch Org is to re-create it from Source.
Now that the preview error is sorted, I have a preview developer org.
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Let that sink in! A preview developer org. We haven’t been able to have those before. Pre-release orgs, yes, but developer orgs, no. |
So I do
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sfdx force:source:push |
Errors
Source Errors
And then things from there went to hell for me. 4+ hours of trying to work this out, and in the end René Winkelmeyer asked “what's the error that you see in the org?”. Aha! something that I should have known and should have been obvious, but gee I felt like such and idiot that I got so bogged down in googling the errors that I did not step back and reason how metadata gets into an org.
Now firstly the error is VS Code is stupid and ridiculous and should be way better.
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N/A duplicate value found: <unknown> duplicates value on record with id: <unknown> |
That’s it! That’s the error. Googling, this article <unknown> duplicates value on record with id: <unknown> is useful but it started me on a huge time sink. How does a company the size of Salesforce allow an error of that level of bullshit even get out. It’s even worse than a Gack! At least a Gack has a number and you can ask some kind soul who works at Salesforce to look it up. But this error, and the Stack Exchange post and every single other post I looked did not give me the help I needed. When I found the help I needed - exactly what was causing this error it was easy to spot and fix.
Do not waste 4 hours like I did! (but yes, there were other errors with flow, see below).
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There is no magic to pushing metadata into Salesforce, force:source:push creates a deployment! That is it. That is the trick you need to know. So now you can go to Deployment Status in the Org and find the error message in there. And that made it crystal clear to me what the error was. |
So for me, the error was that I had created a report in public reports, pulled the metadata, then moved the report into an existing folder then pulled the metadata at another time. There is something funky with report folder metadata and it took a workaround and some help from James Melville to delete the offending source, and then push to my new org, and remove the duplicate issue. But then in the midst of that there was also flow errors.
The other thing René asked me is had I tried doing a regular deploy and retrieve. I had tried to google using push to push one piece of metadata like I can with DX for Deployments, but a quick google told me that was not possible. So once again, I let googling get the better of me rather than my knowledge of how metadata deployments work. I got caught up in the belief that scratch orgs are somehow completely different and did not think that I could just use force:source:deploy to deploy one item of metadata.
After the 4+ hours, my work around was definitely going to be to simplify my metadata and deploy to a developer org or a pre-release org and not use the Dreamhouse basis for my demo. I think starting with that has caused many of my issues.
Flow Errors
I’ve got some flow errors that are related to new flow features that I’m not even using. (Similar to this).
I don’t want to have to re-create my whole 4 flows again, since flows are the basis of my demo!
But something in that flow error article made me think of the API version. Since I’m going into a preview org, maybe I need to update the API. But it should not be the case, because it should be backwards compatible. This post tells me how to set the API version.
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sfdx force:config:set apiVersion=48.0 |
But that did not work.
Ah, interesting, I think it IS something to do with my flows, my API version and the fact that I created a scratch org from a github repo. The repo is on version 45 based on metadataTypeInfos.json. But the org I built the Flows in is Winter '20 so that is version 47. And I did build a flow using a new feature with the Start Node as per the post mentioned above.
So I delete that one flow.
Nope.
Delete all but the main flow.
Nope.
But I’m starting to get somewhere now.
So it seems that the new features in Winter '20 in Flows, where you do not have to manually create all the variables (great feature) is having an issue with the metadata. This Post states that it was confirmed by support. I can not see it in Known Issues though.
Now, the thing is, I am trying to demo Spring ‘20 features, that rely on these Winter '20 features! I don’t want old fashioned Flows in my new Spring '20 flows demo. I now have to rebuild my flows to be compatible with Summer '19 so I can deploy them to a scratch org. Annoying.
Just for shits and giggles I created a Winter '20 Scratch org and tried to push my flow, built in a Winter '20 scratch org, and pulled from a Winter '20 scratch org and it is exactly the same issue. It is nothing to do withe the Preview org. It seems that flow metadata support in DX is a version behind. (Yes, I DID update the CLI before I started working today). The error is…
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Get_Property (Get Records) - Because the queriedFields field is set, you also need to set the following fields: sObjectOutputReference. |
(There is probably something more deeply involved than this, and probably a way I could do something if I sat here for another 6 hours and googled, but there is a way forward for now, so I have to take it. I had to remove the Winter '20 features from my flows).
API Issues
So I found that my sfdx-project.json was set at version 45 - what the version was when the dreamhouse org was created. I tried to set the version to 47 more errors! (eg enableChangeDataCapture was deprecated in 46).
So, I’m trying to push a version 47 feature into an org whose metadata source is on version 45 and the only way around that is to hack the metadata to comply with the new versions. Gee this sucks. (I know why it is so, but wow, to have to do all this with each release on a huge org where you are trying to use a fully automated CI pipeline, kudos to you, because this sucks).
So I cleaned up the deprecated things, and still nope. I still think there is an issue with the flow specific metadata for 47.
Delete a Scratch Org
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sfdx force:org:delete -u yourorgname@org.name |
Expired Scratch Org
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