Connect in Apex

Use Connect in Apex to develop custom experiences in Salesforce. Connect in Apex provides programmatic access to B2B Commerce, CMS managed content, Experience Cloud sites, topics, and more. Create Apex pages that display Chatter feeds, post feed items with mentions and topics, and update user and group photos. Create triggers that update Chatter feeds.

Many Connect REST API resource actions are exposed as static methods on Apex classes in the ConnectApi namespace. These methods use other ConnectApi classes to input and return information. The ConnectApi namespace is referred to as Connect in Apex.

In Apex, you can access some Connect data using SOQL queries and objects. However, it’s simpler to expose data in ConnectApi classes, and data is localized and structured for display. For example, instead of making several calls to access and assemble a feed, you can do it with a single call.

Connect in Apex methods execute in the context of the user executing the methods. The code has access to whatever the context user has access to. It doesn’t run in system mode.

For Connect in Apex reference information, see ConnectApi Namespace.

• Connect in Apex Examples

  Use these examples to perform common tasks with Connect in Apex.

• Connect in Apex Features

  This topic describes which classes and methods to use to work with common Connect in Apex features.

• Using ConnectApi Input and Output Classes

  Some classes in the ConnectApi namespace contain static methods that access Connect REST API data. The ConnectApi namespace also contains input classes to pass as parameters and output classes that calls to the static methods return.

• Understanding Limits for ConnectApi Classes

  Limits for methods in the ConnectApi namespace are different than the limits for other Apex classes.

• Packaging ConnectApi Classes

  If you include ConnectApi classes in a package, be aware of Chatter dependencies.

• Serializing and Deserializing ConnectApi Objects

  When ConnectApi output objects are serialized into JSON, the structure is similar to the JSON returned from Connect REST API. When ConnectApi input objects are deserialized from JSON, the format is also similar to Connect REST API.

• ConnectApi Versioning and Equality Checking

  Versioning in ConnectApi classes follows specific rules that are different than the rules for other Apex classes.

• Casting ConnectApi Objects

  It may be useful to downcast some ConnectApi output objects to a more specific type.

• Wildcards

  Use wildcard characters to match text patterns in Connect REST API and Connect in Apex searches.

• Testing ConnectApi Code

  Like all Apex code, Connect in Apex code requires test coverage.

• Differences Between ConnectApi Classes and Other Apex Classes

  Note these additional differences between ConnectApi classes and other Apex classes.