Convert All Accounts as CSV and Send To sFTP

V1 Prepared By: Abhyash Timsina – 4 November 2022

Motivation: Say you have a requirement that every quarter, you need to get all Account records with specific fields as CSV and send to a sFTP server to store and backup it. This solution will make that happen. It uses various components including FTP API. Note - This is a personal project and not intended for financial gain.

My Technical Components

Open-Source Technical Components

Custom Settings Configuration

Source Code for SendToFTP Apex Class (with annotation starting with //)

/**
 * Created by Abhyash Timsina on 2/11/2022.
 */


// Apex that uses Schedulable context

global with sharing class SendToFTP implements Schedulable {

    global void execute(SchedulableContext sc)
    {
        convertToCSV();
    }

    // Method to get all account records and convert to csv
    public static void convertToCSV(){

        // Can add other account fields here in the SOQL - shame we can't add all without specifying each field
        
        String csv = 'Id,Name\n';
        for ( List<Account> accts : [SELECT Id, Name FROM Account] ) {
        // Formats the csv, adding comma
            for ( Account acct : accts ) {
                csv += acct.Id + ',' + acct.Name.escapeCsv() + '\n';
            }
        }

// Create a file in salesforce and store the csv files data
        ContentVersion file = new ContentVersion(
                Title = 'Accounts Backup - ' + System.now(),
                VersionData = Blob.valueOf( csv ),
                PathOnClient = '/Accounts Backup - ' + System.now() + '.csv'
        );

        insert file;

// Call the sendToFTP method with the csv files name and id
       sendToFTP(file.Title, file.Id);

    }


    // Cannot do DML and Callout in same method so have to use future method
    @Future (Callout=true)
    public static void sendToFTP(String title, Id fileId) {
        uploadFiles(title, fileId);
    }

// Method that does the actual callout to upload the files
    public static FTPResponseWrapper uploadFiles(String title, Id fileId){

        List<FileWrapper> lstFileWrapper = new List<FileWrapper>();
        
        // Finds the File again by querying ContentVersion with the file id as parameter
        
        for(ContentVersion oAttachment : [SELECT Id, ContentDocumentId, VersionData FROM ContentVersion WHERE Id=:fileId]){
        
        // Encode the csv file to base 64
        
            lstFileWrapper.add(new FileWrapper(title + '.csv', '/Desktop', EncodingUtil.base64Encode(oAttachment.VersionData)));
        }
        
        // Since we are uploading, set the endpoint to 'upload'
        String endpoint = FTPWebServiceUtility.FTP_WebServiceEndpoint+'upload';
        
        // Callout with POST method
        
        HttpResponse response = FTPWebService.uploadFileOnFTPServer(endpoint, 'POST', JSON.serialize(lstFileWrapper));

// Return gets us the body of the response. Not really required practically but since this is not a void method, we need to add it. You can do other innovation here like sending an email to a technical contact stating a new backup was generated etc.

        return (FTPResponseWrapper)JSON.deserialize(response.getBody(), FTPResponseWrapper.class);
    }


}

To Schedule Apex (run this from DEV console):

System.schedule('Accounts CSV Backup To FTP', '0 0 12 1 1/3 ?', new scheduledCron ());

To check status of your scheduled job, go here:

{Your Salesforce Org}/lightning/setup/ScheduledJobs/home

To Generate other CRON expressions, I recommend this one:

http://www.cronmaker.com/

Package Link:

If you need help in installing and getting this working – please contact me on LinkedIn