Exploring the Odoo external API

Some familiarity with the Odoo external API should be gained before we implement the client app. The following sections explore the XML-RPC API using a Python interpreter.

Using XML-RPC to connect to the Odoo external API

The simplest way to access the Odoo server is by using XML-RPC. The xmlrpc library, from Python standard library, can be used for this.

Remember that the application being developed is a client that connects to a server. So, a running Odoo server instance is needed for the client to connect to. The code examples will assume that an Odoo server instance is running on the same machine, http://localhost:8069, but any reachable URL can be used if the server you wish to use is running on a different machine.

The Odoo xmlrpc/2/common endpoint exposes public methods, and these can be accessed without a login. These can be used to inspect the server version and check login credentials. Let's use the xmlrpc library to explore...