Our goal for this chapter was to learn how the external API works and what it is capable of. We started exploring it using a simple Python XML-RPC client, but the external API can be used from any programming language. In fact, the official docs provide code examples for Java, PHP, and Ruby.

There are a number of libraries to handle XML-RPC or JSON-RPC, some generic and some specific for use with Odoo. We tried not point out any libraries in particular, except for erppeek, since it is not only a proven wrapper for the Odoo/OpenERP XML-RPC but because it is also an invaluable tool for remote server management and inspection.

Until now, we used our Odoo server instances for development and tests. But to have a production grade server, there are additional security and optimization configurations that need to be done. In the next chapter, we will focus on them.