Trying out an SDK for Open Dental

[Prithviraj]

Hey everyone, need some help with this,

I recently came across an SDK for opendental: https://pypi.org/project/opendental-sdk/1.1.2/

I am wondering if we will be able too test it on Local Trial version, I tested by just using API calls through postman and they managed to work even on the Trial version even though the documentation mentions how the Trial version wont support API calls.

Is there a particular advantage of getting the developer portal and credentials compared to working on this local trial version itself? Or do I need to have a regristration key for it? As going into the API section of the Trial version shows that there is no eService account for the registration key as well.

[justine]

Hey everyone, need some help with this,

I recently came across an SDK for opendental: https://pypi.org/project/opendental-sdk/1.1.2/

I am wondering if we will be able too test it on Local Trial version, I tested by just using API calls through postman and they managed to work even on the Trial version even though the documentation mentions how the Trial version wont support API calls.

Is there a particular advantage of getting the developer portal and credentials compared to working on this local trial version itself? Or do I need to have a regristration key for it? As going into the API section of the Trial version shows that there is no eService account for the registration key as well.

Hi Prithviraj,

That Python SDK you linked isn’t developed or maintained by Open Dental. We looked into it, and its examples don’t match the actual API. For instance, it shows a patients.delete(...) endpoint that doesn’t exist, and it uses fields like FirstName and LastName instead of FName and LName. The GitHub link on its PyPI page also leads to a 404, so there’s no published source code to review. Because of that, I’d strongly recommend avoiding that SDK. If you’re building in Python, it’s best to use standard HTTP calls to the documented endpoints instead.

If your Postman calls seemed to work on the Trial, it’s very likely they were actually connecting to the public demo environment rather than your local Trial database. The SDK or your Postman configuration may have been set up to use https://api.opendental.com/api/v1/ as the base URL, with an Authorization header value of (ODFHIR NFF6i0KrXrxDkZHt/VzkmZEaUWOjnQX2z) public demo credentials we provide for testing. Those demo keys allow safe, read-only access to our hosted demo data, but they don’t connect to your Trial installation. It’s a common misunderstanding, the requests succeed, but they’re talking to the demo server, not the Trial running on your machine.

In short: the PyPI SDK isn’t official and should be avoided, the Trial isn’t intended for API integrations, and the Developer Portal is the right way to get credentials and work with the API in a supported environment.

Thanks!

[Prithviraj]

Thank you for the reply,

I have promptly abandoned the approach with the SDK, and gone back to http endpoints, but contrary to what you said, I was able to connect to the local Trial version using http://localhost:30222/api/v1 and the changes are reflected in the software too, appointments are being entered, patients have been created, technically, it all works, almost flawlessly, although some things that aren't defined like Schedules does mean I can't calculate open timing slots for appointments.

Related to that, I did want to ask, is it possible for us to define these schedules in the local or the hosted demo environment or indeed our local Trial version? If not that, can we define the slots? The blockouts (red blocks) or the green blocks (assuming for available time blocks) for example?
Also, our client does have a specific way of their configuration in their OD setup, so because we want to work on an environment similar to their setup, how do we go about it? They said they can have one of the clinic employees be available to setup the OD environment to be similar to theirs, but they did enquire how to do this, if they should create and host this environment on the cloud for us to access on or for them to setup remotely on our local setup or on an instance in an azure virtual machine.

I hope this wasn't too confusing, could you recommend what we could possibly do to have this replica configuration or a separate test environment based on their clinic configuration? Or could you recommend what our next steps should be to get this particular configuration or setup we want?
Even just from the very start is fine, we have not gone beyond working on the available public demo or the local Trial version, so our knowledge on how to proceed ahead with this particular scenario is limited, any input will be appreciated!

Thank you

[rinse-dental]

I have a little node SDK that anyone is welcome to use. https://www.npmjs.com/package/@rinse-de ... Tab=readme

It's for my own business so it doesn't include every endpoint but it's mostly up to date, decently documented, and speeds up my development significantly.

I've thought about opening it up to codevelopment but haven't had the time or energy.