Salesforce CLI Basics
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:
- Explain what the Salesforce CLI (sf) is used for
- Name three common CLI tasks a developer performs daily
- Read a simple sf command and explain what it does
Prerequisites: "VS Code and Salesforce Extensions"
What it is
The Salesforce CLI is a command-line program (sf) you install once on your machine. Every time VS Code's Salesforce extensions deploy your code or retrieve metadata, they're actually calling the CLI under the hood — the extensions are a friendly wrapper around it.
You'll use it directly a lot once you reach the DevOps module, but it's worth a first look now so sf commands don't feel unfamiliar when they show up in later exercises.
Commands you will see again
sf org login web— opens a browser to log into a Salesforce org and remember it locally.sf project deploy start— pushes local code changes up to a connected org.sf apex run test— runs Apex tests from the command line, exactly what a CI/CD pipeline does automatically (covered in the DevOps module).
You don't need to run any of these yet — just recognize the shape: sf followed by a category (org, project, apex) and an action.
Exercise
Without running anything, write down what you'd expect the command `sf apex run test --code-coverage` to do, based only on its name and this lesson's explanation of sf's command shape.
Show hint
Break it into pieces: sf, apex (category), run test (action), --code-coverage (an option modifying the action).
Salesforce CLI Basics Quiz
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Summary
The Salesforce CLI (the sf command) is the command-line tool that powers everything VS Code's extensions do behind the scenes — authenticating to orgs, deploying code, and running tests — and it's worth understanding on its own since real teams script and automate around it.