A discussion of the CometD protocol and handling events externally

One of the key benefits of the platform event framework is the ability to consume platform events as a subscriber off-platform. One of the ways to consume events off-platform is to use the CometD protocol.

It is outside the scope of this book to discuss connecting using CometD in detail; however, you can use the streaming tool available through Salesforce Workbench at https://workbench.developerforce.com/streaming.php to subscribe to the channel and see events as an external service. To do this, select the Generic Subscriptions option, enter /event/eventName in the Subscription box, and then press the Subscribe button.

For example, in the following screenshot, I have subscribed to the UpdateAccount__e event channel. If you then publish an event using Execute Anonymous, you will see that the event has been consumed, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 12.19 – Subscribing...