Salesforce Callout Best Practices: A Complete Guide for Developers

Connecting Salesforce to other services through external API calls is pretty common nowadays. Whether you're linking up with third-party services, internal APIs, or outside databases, sticking to best practices makes sure your callouts are solid, efficient, and easy to manage. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know for setting up strong callout patterns in Salesforce.

Understanding Salesforce Callout Limitations

Before diving into best practices, it's crucial to understand Salesforce's callout limitations:

• 10-second timeout for synchronous callouts

• Maximum 100 callouts per transaction

• 6MB total heap size limit for response processing

• 120-second timeout for asynchronous callouts

• Named Credentials count toward the 100 callout limit

These limitations shape how we architect our callout solutions and why certain patterns are preferred over others.

1. Use Named Credentials for Authentication

Named Credentials are the gold standard for managing external system authentication in Salesforce. They provide several advantages:

Benefits of Named Credentials:

• Centralized credential management

• Automatic authentication handling

• Environment-specific configurations

• Enhanced security through encryption

• Simplified deployment across orgs

  
  

2. Implement Proper Error Handling

Robust error handling is essential for production callouts. Always plan for various failure scenarios:

3. Leverage Asynchronous Patterns

For non-critical callouts or when dealing with multiple external systems, use asynchronous patterns to improve user experience:

4. Implement Circuit Breaker Pattern

For high-volume integrations, implement a circuit breaker pattern to prevent cascading failures:

5. Use Queueable Apex for Complex Callout Chains

When you need to make multiple related callouts or handle complex processing, Queueable Apex provides more flexibility than @future methods:

6. Optimize Response Processing

When dealing with large responses, optimize memory usage and processing:

7. Monitor and Log Callout Performance

Implement comprehensive monitoring and logging:

8. Avoid DML Before Callout

Or put DML or Callout in asynchronous apex. So there transaction become different.

Testing Callout Best Practices

Always implement comprehensive test coverage for your callouts:

Key Takeaways

Following these best practices will help you build robust, maintainable, and efficient callout solutions:

1. Always use Named Credentials for authentication and endpoint management

2. Implement comprehensive error handling with proper status code checking

3. Use asynchronous patterns for non-critical operations

4. Consider circuit breaker patterns for high-volume integrations

5. Optimize response processing to avoid heap size limits

6. Monitor and log callout performance for troubleshooting

7. Write comprehensive tests with proper mocking

   
   

Remember that callouts are often the most fragile part of your Salesforce integrations. Investing time in proper error handling, monitoring, and testing will save you significant troubleshooting time in production.

By following these patterns and practices, you'll build integrations that are not only functional but also resilient, maintainable, and ready for enterprise-scale usage.

Ready to implement these patterns in your Salesforce org? Start with the basic error handling and Named Credentials setup, then gradually add more sophisticated patterns like circuit breakers and monitoring as your integration complexity grows.