API Integration in Odoo

Flow:

Odoo → API Request → Third-party Service → Response → Odoo stores result

🧩 1. Common Use Cases

💳 Payment gateway (Stripe, SSLCommerz)
📦 Shipping API (FedEx, DHL)
📩 SMS/Email API
🌐 External SaaS (CRM, Analytics)

⚙️ 2. Basic Setup

Install Python library:

pip install requests

🧠 3. Model Example (API Integration)

Let’s build a Weather Fetch Module (simple real-world pattern)

import requests
from odoo import models, fields
from odoo.exceptions import ValidationError

class Weather(models.Model):
_name = 'weather.info'
_description = 'Weather Info'

city = fields.Char(required=True)
temperature = fields.Float()
description = fields.Char()

def action_get_weather(self):
for rec in self:
url = f"https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q={rec.city}&appid=YOUR_API_KEY&units=metric"

response = requests.get(url)

if response.status_code != 200:
raise ValidationError("API Error!")

data = response.json()

rec.temperature = data['main']['temp']
rec.description = data['weather'][0]['description']

🎨 4. Button in View (Trigger API)

<button name="action_get_weather"
        type="object"
        string="Fetch Weather"
        class="btn-primary"/>

👉 User clicks → API runs → Data updates

🔐 5. Best Practice (Production Level)

✅ Use config parameters (DON’T hardcode API keys)

api_key = self.env['ir.config_parameter'].sudo().get_param('weather.api_key')

✅ Add error handling

try:
    response = requests.get(url, timeout=10)
    response.raise_for_status()
except Exception as e:
    raise ValidationError(f"API failed: {str(e)}")

✅ Logging (important)

import logging
_logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)

_logger.info("Calling Weather API...")

🔁 6. Automated API Calls (CRON JOB)

<record id="cron_weather" model="ir.cron">
    <field name="name">Fetch Weather</field>
    <field name="model_id" ref="model_weather_info"/>
    <field name="state">code</field>
    <field name="code">model.action_get_weather()</field>
    <field name="interval_number">1</field>
    <field name="interval_type">hours</field>
</record>

👉 Runs automatically every hour

🔄 7. Real Production Flow

User clicks button / Cron runs
↓
Odoo sends request (requests.get)
↓
API returns JSON
↓
Parse data
↓
Save into Odoo model
↓
Display in UI

🔥 8. Real Lessons from Production

✅ DO:

Use timeout (avoid hanging server)
Store API keys securely
Validate responses
Log everything

❌ DON’T:

Call API inside loops without control
Block UI with slow APIs
Hardcode credentials

🚀 9. Advanced Integrations

OAuth authentication (Google API)
Webhooks (real-time updates)
REST API (POST, PUT, DELETE)
Queue jobs (for heavy APIs)

🧠 Final Mental Model

Button / Cron → Python Method → requests → API → JSON → Odoo Model

Integrating Third-Party APIs into Odoo