Login error connecting to salesforce.com from Flex

Question

Has anyone suddenly encountered login errors from their users trying to connect to salesforce.com from a Flex app using as3salesforce.swc?

I get the following error... password removed to protect the innocent...

App Domain = null
Api Server name = na3.salesforce.com
_internalServerUrl = https://na3.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/14.0
loading the policy file: https://na3.salesforce.com/services/Soap/cross-domain.xml
Your application must be running on a https server in order to use https to communicate with salesforce.com!
login with creds
loading the policy file: https://na3.salesforce.com/services/crossdomain.xml
Your application must be running on a https server in order to use https to communicate with salesforce.com!
invoke login
intServerUrl is null
intServerUrl = https://na3.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/14.0
_invoke login
'5A5D3012-7717-E3C2-9B39-FFBBFF1F1B47' producer set destination to 'DefaultHTTPS'.
Method name is: login
'direct_http_channel' channel endpoint set to http://localhost/pm_server/pm/
'5A5D3012-7717-E3C2-9B39-FFBBFF1F1B47' producer sending message 'E32C7199-72C1-B258-B483-FFBC1641173D'
'direct_http_channel' channel sending message:
(mx.messaging.messages::HTTPRequestMessage)#0
  body = "<se:Envelope xmlns:se="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"&gt;&lt;se:Header xmlns:sfns="urn:partner.soap.sforce.com"/><se:Body><login xmlns="urn:partner.soap.sforce.com" xmlns:ns1="sobject.partner.soap.sforce.com"><username>[email protected]</username><password>******</password></login></se:Body></se:Envelope>"
  clientId = (null)
  contentType = "text/xml; charset=UTF-8"
  destination = "DefaultHTTPS"
  headers = (Object)#1
  httpHeaders = (Object)#2
    Accept = "text/xml"
    SOAPAction = """"
    X-Salesforce-No-500-SC = "true"
  messageId = "E32C7199-72C1-B258-B483-FFBC1641173D"
  method = "POST"
  recordHeaders = false
  timestamp = 0
  timeToLive = 0
  url = "https://na3.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/14.0"
'5A5D3012-7717-E3C2-9B39-FFBBFF1F1B47' producer connected.
Method name is: login
Error: Ignoring policy file at https://na3.salesforce.com/crossdomain.xml due to meta-policy 'by-content-type'.

'5A5D3012-7717-E3C2-9B39-FFBBFF1F1B47' producer acknowledge of 'E32C7199-72C1-B258-B483-FFBC1641173D'.
responseType: Fault
Saleforce Soap Fault: sf:INVALID_LOGIN
INVALID_LOGIN: Invalid username, password, security token; or user locked out.
Comunication Error : sf:INVALID_LOGIN : INVALID_LOGIN: Invalid username, password, security token; or user locked out. : [object Object]

Answer 1

Obviously nobody else out there is building Flex apps on top of salesforce.com..

yippee, I'm first.

Anyhow, I just found out that this is a bug at salesforce.com as at 6th December 2008. The issue is that the scripts which handle login do not cope adequately with the redirect necessary because of load balancing on the salesforce.com servers.

It should be possible to go through the www front door of salesforce.com's api with a URL such as...

"https://www.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/13.0";

where the 13 represents the version of their API you are targetting. However, all users are actually assigned to a specific server, so the front door should redirect the login request to the approriate place, and it doesn't if you are coming from Flex.

A workround is to specify your server in the URL, such as...

"https://na5.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/13.0";

...which is what I was doing. That's fine if you are a single user accessing the same resources continually and your account remains attached to that server. However if...

1. You are distributing your app so anyone who has a salesforce.com enterprise account can log in OR
2. Your account gets moved because of some internal load balancing (which is what happened to me)

then the approach of providing a fixed server won't work.

The bug (as far as I understand it) is that the www route doesn't adequately redirect to your host server. Last intelligence was that it will be fixed "soon".

I wish I could mark this as the answer...

Answer 2

None of that works!!!! :@