CloudVandana Salesforce Tip#3: Create package.xml file on the fly
Atul Gupta
Building Global Products and Services Companies from India........ Hire Talent | Salesforce Apps and Services | IT Services
The package.xml pain
If you are a big fan of Force.com Migration Tool a.k.a Ant Migration Tool like me then you know how cumbersome it is to create a package.xml file for it. Either you have been disciplined enough from the start that as you go along building/creating stuff in Salesforce, you note down their api names properly, otherwise you are in for a big task of getting the api names of the components that need to be deployed either manually or via Force.com IDE.
Force.com IDE has been the only way(apart from manually creating the file) to create a package.xml or destructive.xml file so far. It is a great tool but we all know it takes it's sweet time in creating one, especially if the number of components in your Salesforce org are high, Force.com IDE takes time to fetch them and show them to you to select the components you want and prepare a package.xml.
Plus, if you select all the components, it will just give you a package.xml with something like this, which is not at all useful.
Now you are curious, what do I mean that its been the only way so far, it's still the only way right? No, I've discovered an awesome tool that will make your life much easier.
The Discovery
I would like to introduce you to the Package Builder. Another awesome tool in the series of awesome tools created by Ben Edwards. I think this guy sat down with a lot of Redbulls one night and built all these awesome tools off.
The User Guide
Now how come this tool will make your life easy?
Go to this URL https://packagebuilder.herokuapp.com and you will land up on this page
Choose the Environment type, either Production (for Production/Developer) or Sandbox and click the big orange button "LOGIN TO SALESFORCE WITH OAUTH". This will take to the login page
Put in the org's credentials for which you want to create package.xml file. Now you are logged in and you can choose of the following options
All Components : if you the package.xml for all the components in the Org
Exclude Managed : package.xml with no managed packaged components
No Packaged Components : components from both managed and unmanaged packages will be skipped
Choose one and click on the button "GET COMPONENTS"
Depending on the number of components in your Salesforce org, it will take sometime and give you a package.xml of all the components in your org. Ain't that sweet.
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