Control API interface to Odoo 16

Problem

The APPUiO Cloud Control API currently interacts with Odoo 8 through the Odoo 8 JSON-RPC API. However, VSHN is migrating to Odoo 16, and we need to update the Control API to interact with Odoo 16.

Goal

  • Define how the Control API will interact with Odoo 16

Non-Goals

  • Define how metered billing data will be sent to Odoo 16 [1]

Proposals

Define REST endpoints for the operations done by the Control API

We use the muk_rest addon in Odoo 16 to provide a REST API for specific functionality. We could refactor the Control API to use the REST API /api/v2/search_read endpoint to manage partner records. However, this may require a non-trivial amount of work to reimplement the Control API Odoo integration since we’d have to write a client for the REST API from scratch.

Use the XML-RPC Odoo API for the Control API

We currently use the JSON-RPC Odoo API to interact with Odoo 8 in the Control API.

The data models haven’t changed a lot between Odoo 8 and Odoo 16. There’s minor differences in how the Customer to Billing contact relationship will be modelled. However, the authentication process is significantly different.

There are multiple 3rd party Go clients for the XML-RPC API for recent Odoo versions. For example, github.com/skilld-labs/go-odoo supports the authentication protocol, provides a fairly nice API and has Go types for the base Odoo models out of the box. Additionally, the client library also exposes a low-level API which provides convenience wrappers for constructing XML-RPC calls.

Refactor the existing JSON-RPC client of the Control API to be compatible with Odoo 16

We could refactor our current custom Odoo 8 JSON-RPC client to support the Odoo 16 authentication protocol. It’s unclear how much effort this would be, since the official Odoo API documentation only mentions the XML-RPC endpoints, and doesn’t have any information about the JSON-RPC endpoints. The JSON-RPC endpoints still exist, since the web interface still uses JSON-RPC, but it’s likely we’d have to reverse-engineer the authentication endpoint of the JSON-RPC API.

Decision

Use the XML-RPC Odoo API with a 3rd party client for the Control API.

Rationale

There’s no real benefit in implementing REST API endponints for functionality which is already accessible through the XML-RPC API. In contrast, by sticking to the base XML-RPC API, we don’t bind the Control API Odoo 16 integration to a paid 3rd party Odoo plugin.

Additionally, the changes to the Control API Odoo integration will be fairly small, since the data model of the XML-RPC API hasn’t changed a lot. While we could implement the new authentication protocol in the existing client, it’s probably easier to build a new backend for the odoostorage component based on an existing 3rd party library for the Odoo XML-RPC API.

1. Metered billing data will be sent to Odoo 16 through a custom REST API implemented with the muk_rest plugin, see also the Odoo 16 REST API documentation.