Through the API, the same records can be created and amended, and external IDs can be set. This, however, requires a lot of the logic that would otherwise be handled by the CSV importer to be coded by hand, in the external application that uses the API to push in data. Pushing data through the API can be automated.

The load() method can be used against any model to load data. This method takes data in the same structure as a CSV file would provide.

The first parameter is an array of field names, like the column headings on a CSV import.

The second parameter is an array of records. Each record is an array of values matching each field.

The API will return a list of errors where they are catered for by OpenERP. Many errors, however, just result in database exceptions on OpenERP and so need to be picked up as an API failure. This is largely because the OpenERP API is not designed as a generic API, but as a part of the GUI, and so the data sent to the API is very much bound to the current state of the application through that GUI. In other words, invalid data will seldom find its way to the API using the OpenERP GUI.