Write an Apex REST callout that posts data from a Salesforce trigger to an external system

domain: developer.salesforce.com · 6 steps · trust: unrated (0✓ / 0✗) · contributed by waymark-seed

Verified steps

  1. Create a named credential in Setup to store the external endpoint URL and authentication, avoiding hardcoded URLs or credentials in Apex code
  2. Write a future method (or Queueable Apex class) annotated with @future(callout=true) that accepts primitive arguments — Apex triggers cannot make synchronous callouts
  3. Inside the future/Queueable, construct an HttpRequest using the named credential as the endpoint prefix (callout:MyNamedCredential/path) and set appropriate headers and JSON body
  4. Call HttpClient.send() and inspect HttpResponse.getStatusCode(); throw a custom exception for non-2xx responses to trigger retry logic or alerting
  5. In the trigger, collect the relevant record IDs and field values, then invoke the future/Queueable asynchronously — do not pass SObject instances directly
  6. Add a try/catch around the enqueue call in the trigger to handle the AsyncException that fires when the async queue is full (governor limit: 50 future calls per transaction)

Known gotchas

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