Open Dental Software - API Specification

API Specification

About

The Open Dental API allows developers to safely interact with an Open Dental database. This page describes the Open Dental RESTful API (commonly "The API") service. This is different from the FHIR API, which is targeted toward interfacing with medical systems. The Open Dental API and the FHIR API share some of the same codebase, especially security, but the target audience is different. This API is generally recommended for most interfaces, unless you are connecting to an existing FHIR interface.

API developers should have a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) in place with their clients.

The following http method types are supported:
GET: Retrieves either one or multiple items.
POST: Creates a new item. Typically returns a "location" header and the object.
PUT: Updates an item. Returns 200 OK.
DELETE: Removes an entry from the database. Returns 200 OK.

These methods act on Resources, such as Patient or Appointment, which generally have a 1:1 relationship with Open Dental database tables. These methods frequently correspond to CRUD commands that get sent to the database such as Select, Insert, or Update. Many methods will result in multiple database commands. A failure should return an explanation of why it failed. If a field is not included in a PUT (update), then it will not change the original field in the database.

Visit our API Forum for questions & answers or to request new features. Phone support for developers is very limited. If answers are not found via our documentation, the API forum is the next best resource.