OBAPI OBAPI

OBAPI -- Open Business API

OBAPI is an open standard that defines a unified REST API for exchanging business documents between companies.

The problem

Every month, businesses download invoices, orders and other documents from dozens of provider portals -- each with its own interface. Tools like web scrapers (woob.tech, cozy.io) try to solve this, but break every time a provider redesigns their website.

The solution

OBAPI reverses the problem at the source: providers expose a standard API endpoint. Any OBAPI-compatible client can retrieve documents from any OBAPI-compatible provider, without provider-specific code. Think of it as RSS for business documents.

GET /obapi/v1/invoices
Authorization: Bearer {token}

One client, any provider. No scraping, no maintenance.

Scope

OBAPI covers 24 business objects organized in 3 tiers:

Tier 1 -- Core (9 objects): Thirdparty, Contact, Product, Proposal, Order, Invoice, Credit Note, Shipment, Download

Tier 2 -- Extended (7 objects): Supplier Proposal, Supplier Order, Supplier Invoice, Reception, Contract, Intervention, Ticket

Tier 3 -- Advanced (8 objects): Project, Task, Expense Report, BOM, Manufacturing Order, Warehouse, Member, Category

Plus transversal concerns: Discovery, Authentication, Pagination, Error handling, Dictionaries.

A server can implement any subset -- the Discovery endpoint tells clients which capabilities are available.

Key design principles

  • Read-only (GET only) -- safe to expose, no risk of data corruption
  • ERP-agnostic -- works with Dolibarr, Odoo, SAP, custom systems, or any backend
  • Simple -- standard REST, JSON responses, Bearer token auth
  • Predictable -- consistent field naming, pagination, error format across all objects
  • Progressive -- implement Tier 1 first, add Tier 2 and 3 when needed

Get started

Join us