Building Headless Apps on Salesforce

Headless Salesforce & APIsBuilding Headless Apps on SalesforceReference architectures for using Salesforce as the backend of web, mobile, service and AI clients. Covers how to choose an identity model, a full Next.js App Router example (PKCE login, server-side tokens, GraphQL, Apex REST, live updates via Pub/Sub and server-sent events), Mobile SDK, Heroku AppLink, headless agents and MCP, licensing, rate limits and operations.Advanced · about 100 minutesWhat you will learn

Choose a reference architecture for a web, mobile, backend-service or AI client on top of Salesforce

Pick the right identity model: internal users, external (Experience Cloud) users, or an integration user with service-side authorization

Build a Next.js App Router app with PKCE login, server-side token storage and refresh, GraphQL reads and Apex REST writes

Push live updates to browsers with a Pub/Sub API subscriber and server-sent events without leaking data

Explain the current Mobile SDK, Heroku AppLink and Heroku Connect, and what replaced Salesforce Functions

Apply licensing, caching, rate-limit, deployment and observability practices to headless apps

Contents

Reference architectures

Choosing the identity model

A complete Next.js App Router example

Salesforce Mobile SDK

Heroku and Salesforce

Headless AI: Agent API and MCP

Licensing considerations

Caching and rate-limit strategies

Deployment and observability

Best practices

Common pitfalls

Hands-on exercises

Key takeaways