This post is courtesy of Bashir Qaasim, one of our talented consultants.
Salesforce Workbench is a very powerful browser-based PHP app thatallows users to describe, query, manipulate, and migrate both data and metadata in Salesforce.com organizations directly in their web browser with a simple and intuitive user interface.
Basically, it’s Data Loader on steroids! It’s been an amazing help to me in the past month or so, and I think everyone could benefit from it. The application needs to run on a web-server though, so here is how to get it running. The installation may look intimidating, but it is actually quite simple, plus the results are nothing less than priceless:NOTE: I had an idea to get it up and running on cloud based Amazon server, but the developer never intended the tool to scale in this way, so you should run it on your own MacBook.
Download and Install XAMPP Web Server for OS X
Download XAMPP for OS X from the link below, and install the Application as you would any other (it is a simple .dmg file).
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-macosx.html#849
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-macosx.html#849
Download and Install Workbench
Download workbench from the following web page:
http://code.google.com/p/forceworkbench/downloads/detail?name=workbench-21.0.1.zip&can=2&q=
http://code.google.com/p/forceworkbench/downloads/detail?name=workbench-21.0.1.zip&can=2&q=
Unzip the workbench file you downloaded and place the folder into the following directory:
/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs/xampp
/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs/xampp
Test XAMPP and Workbench
Open your Applications Folder and open “XAMPP Control.” There will be three Start buttons, each for Apache, MySQL, and FTP. Start all of them, and you may be prompted for your OS X password.
After they are all started, go to your browser and type in “http://localhost/xampp/.” You should get a page Titled, “XAMPP for Mac OS X.”Now test your workbench installation by browsing to “http://localhost/xampp/workbench/“CONGRATS! But wait, you need to enable SSL before using it safely.Enable SSL on XAMPP
In order to submit your Salesforce credentials securely through Workbench, you must enable SSL on XAMPP. You do this through the OS X terminal. Open the Terminal Application and type:sudo /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/xampp enablesslPress enter. If you have a password on OS X, you will be asked to type it in. You should get a message stating that it is now enabled. After doing this you will be able to access workbench securely in your browser at:https://localhost/xampp/workbench/You may get a security warning about an untrusted certificate, but just ignore it. The untrusted source is YOU! So no worries.ENJOY!
NOTE: Never ever ever ever submit secure credentials through a simple http connection!
