Create a Salesforce Marketing Cloud base connection using the Flow Service API
A base connection represents the authenticated connection between a source and Adobe Experience Platform.
This tutorial walks you through the steps to create a base connection for Salesforce Marketing Cloud using the Flow Service API.
Getting started
This guide requires a working understanding of the following components of Adobe Experience Platform:
- Sources: Experience Platform allows data to be ingested from various sources while providing you with the ability to structure, label, and enhance incoming data using Platform services.
- Sandboxes: Experience Platform provides virtual sandboxes which partition a single Platform instance into separate virtual environments to help develop and evolve digital experience applications.
Using Platform APIs
For information on how to successfully make calls to Platform APIs, see the guide on getting started with Platform APIs.
The following section provides additional information that you will need to know in order to successfully connect to Salesforce Marketing Cloud using the Flow Service API.
Gather required credentials
In order for Flow Service to connect with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you must provide the following connection properties:
hosthost value, you need to specify the {subdomain}.rest.marketingcloudapis.com. For example, if your host URL is https://acme-ab12c3d4e5fg6hijk7lmnop8qrst.auth.marketingcloudapis.com/, then you must enter acme-ab12c3d4e5fg6hijk7lmnop8qrst.rest.marketingcloudapis.com/ as your host value.clientIdclientSecretconnectionSpec.idea1c2a08-b722-11eb-8529-0242ac130003.For more information about getting started, refer to this Salesforce Marketing Cloud document.
Create a base connection
A base connection retains information between your source and Platform, including your source’s authentication credentials, the current state of the connection, and your unique base connection ID. The base connection ID allows you to explore and navigate files from within your source and identify the specific items that you want to ingest, including information regarding their data types and formats.
To create a base connection ID, make a POST request to the /connections endpoint while providing your Salesforce Marketing Cloud authentication credentials as part of the request body.
API format
POST /connections
Request
The following request creates a base connection for Salesforce Marketing Cloud:
curl -X POST \
'https://platform.adobe.io/data/foundation/flowservice/connections' \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer {ACCESS_TOKEN}' \
-H 'x-api-key: {API_KEY}' \
-H 'x-gw-ims-org-id: {ORG_ID}' \
-H 'x-sandbox-name: {SANDBOX_NAME}' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
"name": "Salesforce Marketing Cloud base connection",
"description": "Salesforce Marketing Cloud base connection",
"auth": {
"specName": "Client-Id-Secret Based Authentication",
"params": {
"host": "acme-ab12c3d4e5fg6hijk7lmnop8qrst"
"clientId": "acme-salesforce-marketing-cloud",
"clientSecret": "xxxx"
}
},
"connectionSpec": {
"id": "ea1c2a08-b722-11eb-8529-0242ac130003",
"version": "1.0"
}
}'
auth.params.clientIdauth.params.clientSecretconnectionSpec.idea1c2a08-b722-11eb-8529-0242ac130003.Response
A successful response returns the newly created connection, including its unique connection identifier (id). This ID is required to explore your data in the next tutorial.
{
"id": "2fce94c1-9a93-4971-8e94-c19a93097129",
"etag": "\"d403848a-0000-0200-0000-5e978f7b0000\""
}
Next steps
By following this tutorial, you have created a Salesforce Marketing Cloud base connection using the Flow Service API. You can use this base connection ID in the following tutorials: