Open Dental Forum

Hello!

We are building an application that will be interfacing with OpenDental data. We wanted to use the API instead of using SQL procedures but we are finding it a little confusing to understand how to start. The OpenDental docs states that the API Endpoint is https://api.opendental.com/fhir/v2 but it's unclear what that is. Is that just for the test server that's provided later in the docs? If we are connecting to our own database via the API what is the endpoint? We wanted to do a test run and connect from our own computer via localhost but we were unable to do so. We have econnector installed and API keys generated.

Am I missing something here? Are all API requests actually going to api.opendental.com in the cloud and we somehow need to connect our server to Opendental cloud? Or is there an alternate endpoint that we can use to access data locally (then we can develop around that and transport the data accordingly).

Let me know please. Thanks!

Hi,

I'll answer a few of your questions as best as I can, and will have developers more familiar take a look when they are back in the office. You are correct in that the endpoint is https://api.opendental.com/fhir/v2 for both your developer/customer keys and also the test database. DeveloperKey/CustomerAPIKey are provided as parameters when sending a request. This request then gets routed to the correct customers office. The customers office receives the request via the econnector, which then routes the request to interact with the customer(Dental office) database.

If you have not yet setup a Developer API key follow the instructions in the documentation to do so.

To obtain a developer API key, contact vendor.relations@opendental.com. Please include the details below.
Developer name:
Company name:
Email address:
A list of the API Resources you need access to, the level of access such as read/write/update:
A description of the application you are intending to build (type and purpose):

Feel free to use the testing keys provided in the documentation to interact with the test database to test functionality. As this is the same endpoint, with only differing keys from what you'd utilize in production, you should be able to develop and test functionality against our test database.

I also need information like how to get the insurance benefit using the API

I want to be sure to address this in both places you asked. Our FHIR API does not handle insurance or benefits at this time. However, the new internal API we are creating will and I will update you when that is live. Sorry.

The new API doesn't really seem to have a method yet for insurance benefits. Once we add query capability to the API, then you could use that to query for what you need. It's sort of hard for me to imagine why anyone would normally want this info. I assume you are talking about 100-80-50 percentages on plans? Those are benefits in OD. Or do you mean something else?