Until now, we have been working with server-side code. However, the Odoo server also provides an external API, which is used by its web client and is also available for other client applications.
In this chapter, we will learn how to use the Odoo external API from our own client programs. For simplicity, we will focus on Python-based clients.
The Odoo API can be accessed externally using two different protocols: XML-RPC and JSON-RPC. Any external program capable of implementing a client for one of these protocols will be able to interact with an Odoo server. To avoid introducing additional programming languages, we will keep using Python to explore the external API.
Until now, we have been running Python code only on the server. This time, we will use Python on the client side, so it's possible you might need to do some additional setup on your workstation.
To follow the examples in this chapter, you will need to be able to run Python files on your work computer. The Odoo server requires Python 2, but our RPC client can be in any language, so Python 3 will be just fine. However, since some readers may be running the server on the same machine they are working on (hello Ubuntu users!), it will be simpler for everyone to follow if we stick to Python 2.
If you are using Ubuntu or a Macintosh, probably Python is already installed. Open a terminal console, type python, and you should be greeted with something like the following:
Python 2.7.8 (default, Oct 20 2014, 15:05:29) [GCC 4.9.1] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright",", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>>
Note
Windows users can find an installer and also quickly get up to speed. The official installation packages can be found at https://www.python.org/downloads/.