Salesforce CLI Scanner: Improving Code Quality

Coding is not an easy task for the developers as the code must be developed in an Agile manner and a streamlined development process increases the efficiency. This is where the Salesforce CLI Scanner fits into. It is an open-source tool that is a plugin to identify the tricky defects or vulnerabilities and other coding related simple or recurring issues. The tool uses several code analysis engines using different languages. It generates high-quality code by running the scanner in the CLI or CI/CD frameworks with the enforcement of rules. This way the tool helps to avoid recurring issues and automatically and efficiently reduce the tedious process of manual review of the code. It can reduce the cost and the risks associated with the defects present in the code.

In this post, we will throw light on the following aspects :

• Salesforce CLI Scanner, its features
• Issues handled
• Types of reporting formats.

 Salesforce CLI Scanner offers various benefits:

Benefits of Salesforce CLI Scanner

The benefits are as follows:

• Prepare a formal security review process by identification of issues, well in advance during development such as quality, performance and security issues.
• Monitor the code at a regular interval by the installation of the Salesforce CLI Scanner plug-in in a local machine.

What are the Features of Salesforce CLI Scanner

 The features of Salesforce CLI Scanner are:

• Detect coding issues and common antipatterns that leave an impact on code quality with Salesforce CLI Scanner, which is an aggregated static analyzer with a rule engine.
• Provide an aggregated output of various static analyzers, which are important for the Salesforce developers to address the pain points of developers managing multiple static analyzer tools. This provides a unified experience.
• Obtain a single installation process, a single set of commands that interact with several rule engines.
• Provide a unified set of rules as checked by different rule engines and unified rule violation reports on issues detected by the engines.
• Support all languages used by the Salesforce developers with Salesforce CLI Scanner as it can aggregate both PMD (v6.22.0) and ESlint (6.8.0).
• Salesforce CLI Scanner works on all Operating Systems as supported by Salesforce CLI.
• Offer built-in help.

What are the Different Types of Issues Handled by Salesforce CLI Scanner?

 Salesforce CLI Scanner helps to detect the issues of code as it combines the features of two static analyzers to detect issues early. The Apex Issues are related to performance, security and issues related to the errors in the code. Some of the issues for the Lightning Web Component are unused variables, unreachable code, preferences related style such as inserting semicolon at the statement and others.

Early detection of issues can help you in the following ways:

• Resolve the issues immediately and then rerun the Salesforce CLI Scanner to find whether the issues are fixed or not.
• Save the time and effort of your development team by resolution of issues during the development phases rather than doing at later phases.
• Ensure an easier and faster security review process before the start of the review with the resolution of issues.

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What are the Different Reports Formats Supported by Salesforce CLI Scanner?

The reports formats supported by the Salesforce CLI Scanner performs the following activities:

• Get feedback on active code with simple table-style reporting.
• Get filtering and analytics based on spreadsheets in the form of CSV reporting.
• Provide feeds for other tools with JSON and XML reporting.
• Get readable, and searchable reports with HTML Reporting.
• CI/CD Setup with JUnit-style test failures.

Summary

 Salesforce CLI Scanner helps the developers in a lot many ways such as cleaner code. It enables you to detect the issues early before pushing the work of your development team. Although it cannot replace manual code reviews, an automated tool such as Salesforce CLI Scanner detects the specific code/markup for errors. Moreover, code reviews offer excellent ways to share knowledge with your development team members. Furthermore, Salesforce CLI Scanner finds the issues before entering the testing phase. Also, it can deliver faster, accurate and easy to understand results. Finally, this can save the valuable time of the code reviewers to understand the complexity of a method.

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