Salesforce DX Developer Guide

How Salesforce Developer Experience (DX) Tooling Changes the Way You Work
Provide Developers Access to Salesforce DX Tools
Project Setup
Sample Repository on GitHub
Create a Salesforce DX Project
Salesforce DX Project Structure and Source Format
How to Exclude Source When Syncing
Create a Salesforce DX Project from Existing Source
Convert Files in Metadata Format to Source Format
Salesforce DX Usernames and Orgs
Link a Namespace to a Dev Hub Org
Salesforce DX Project Configuration
Multiple Package Directories
Replace Strings in Code Before Deploying or Packaging
Authorization
Metadata Coverage
Scratch Orgs
Sandboxes
Track Changes Between Your Project and Org
Work with Data
Salesforce DX MCP Server and Tools
Development
Build and Release Your App
Unlocked Packages
Continuous Integration
Troubleshoot Salesforce DX
Limitations for Salesforce DX
PDF

Note: This release is in preview. Features described here don’t become generally available until the latest general availability date that Salesforce announces for this release. Before then, and where features are noted as beta, pilot, or developer preview, we can’t guarantee general availability within any particular time frame or at all. Make your purchase decisions only on the basis of generally available products and features.

Convert Files in Metadata Format to Source Format

If you already have a repo in which you’ve retrieved metadata from an org using the Metadata API directly, the files are in metadata format. You can convert these files into source format and add them to your Salesforce DX project. You can then deploy and retrieve them to and from your org using CLI commands and use source tracking to track changes.

The convert command ignores all files that start with a “dot,” such as .DS_Store. To exclude more files from the convert process, add a .forceignore file.

  1. Change to your Salesforce DX project directory.
  2. Convert the files from metadata format to source format with the project convert mdapi command. Let’s say your metadata-format files are in a directory called /Users/testing/mdapi_project. 
    1sf project convert mdapi --root-dir /Users/testing/mdapi_project

    The --root-dir flag is the name of the directory that contains the metadata format files.

    The converted source is stored in the default package directory indicated in the sfdx-project.json file, typically named force-app. Use the --output-dir flag to put the converted files in a different package directory; the command creates the directory if it doesn’t exist.

  3. If the convert created a package directory in your project, add it to your sfdx-project.json file.