Python Simple Salesforce

Question

I am trying to use simple_salesforce to query salesforce data with Python. I am using my username and password, which I am 100% sure is correct. I got the org ID from logging into Salesforce and looking at my company profile. It's only a 15-digit ID. I am specifically using an orgID to avoid using a security token as I don't know what it is. What am I doing wrong?

Code:

from simple_salesforce import Salesforce
sf = Salesforce(instance_url='https://na1.salesforce.com', session_id='')
sf = Salesforce(password='password', username='email', organizationId='15 digit org id')

Output:

File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\simple_salesforce\api.py", line 100, in __init__
proxies=self.proxies)
File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\simple_salesforce\login.py", line 124, in SalesforceLogin
code=except_code, message=except_msg))
simple_salesforce.login.SalesforceAuthenticationFailed: INVALID_LOGIN: Invalid username, password, security token; or user locked out.

Answer 1

There is a way to log in with simple-salesforce with only a username and password. No security token required:

from simple_salesforce import Salesforce, SalesforceLogin

session_id, instance = SalesforceLogin(username='<user>', password='<pass>')
sf = Salesforce(instance=instance, session_id=session_id)
# Logged in! Now perform API actions, SOQL queries, etc.
sf.query_all('<soql>')

Explanation

All examples using simple-salesforce begin with a call to the Salesforce constructor to log in. This constructor accepts either an existing session ID, or authentication credentials to log in and make a new session. When logging in, it calls the lower-level SalesforceLogin function to do the real work, but interestingly SalesforceLogin does not enforce the same constraints on its arguments—it issues the correct SOAP call to log in with just a username and password, without requiring a token or organization ID.

Using this trick, we call SalesforceLogin directly, obtain the new session ID, then pass it directly into the Salesforce constructor. From that point on, we are able to make authenticated API requests.

Note

The version of simple-salesforce on PyPI (i.e. pip install simple-salesforce) is very outdated with the simple-salesforce GitHub repository. The latest version supports additional login parameters like domain for login with custom domains. To get the latest version, use

pip install --upgrade https://github.com/simple-salesforce/simple-salesforce/archive/master.zip

(Pip-installing from zip is faster than using git+ssh:// or git+https://, as noted in this answer.)