Odoo Developer Notes

• CSS / SASS
• Naming
• Default widget for optional pivot's measures
• Time zone settings
• Wkhtmltopdf smart shrinking
• Set up fields.Selection:selection by method (supporting inheritance)
• <xpath ... position="move">
• Advanced attribute modification
• Hide menu items from from users of a particular group
• The attribute "force_save"
• A good way to display a warning on a form view
• "Clean action"
• "Getting a record ID by its external identifier in qweb templates"
• How to update record values?
• Module structure

Advanced attribute modification

<xpath expr="//div" position="attribute">
    <attribute name="class" add="my-fav-div" separator=" " />
</xpath>

Use remove instead of add to cut out a substring.

The attribute "force_save"

By default Odoo does not consider changes of readonly fields on views. But you can force it to do that with the force_save attribute.

<field name="readonly_field>" force_save="1"/>

A good way to display a warning on a form view

<!-- odoo/addons/base/views/res_partner_views.xml -->
<record id="view_partner_form" model="ir.ui.view">
    ...
    <field name="arch" type="xml">
        <form string="Partners">
            <div class="alert alert-warning oe_edit_only" role="alert" attrs="{'invisible': [('same_vat_partner_id', '=', False)]}">
                A partner with the same <span><span class="o_vat_label">Tax ID</span></span> already exists (<field name="same_vat_partner_id"/>), are you sure to create a new one?
            </div>
            ...

v15

"Clean action"

You return an action out of a model method in order to run this action on the frontend. Suppose, the action has view_mode=tree,form, so you expect to get a tree view. But what you get is a form view for a new record.

In this situation you may want to "clean your action". Try to wrap it up in clean_action() as the endpoint for "/web/dataset/call_button" does.

v15

Getting a record ID by its external identifier in qweb templates

Use %(external identifier)d. It works in attrs, domain, name, probably somewhere else.

<!-- addons/base/views/ir_actions_views.xml -->
<button name="run" string="Run" type="object"
                                class="btn-primary"
                                attrs="{'invisible':['|', ('model_id', '!=', %(base.model_ir_actions_server)s), ('state', '!=', 'code')]}"
                                help="Run this action manually."/>

<!-- addons/base/views/res_lang_views.xml -->
<button string="Activate and Translate"
    name="%(base.action_view_base_language_install)d"
    type="action"
    class="oe_stat_button"
    icon="fa-refresh" />


<!-- addons/im_livechat/views/im_livechat_channel_views.xml -->
<field name="user_ids" nolabel="1" colspan="2" domain="[['groups_id', 'not in', %(base.group_portal)d]]">

v16

How to update record values

I know three ways to do it:

1. The dot operator (or any other pythonic way to assign a value e.g. setattr()).
2. The method update.
3. The method write.

update() goes through every field-value pair in values and changes every field one by one via square brackets. Square brackets. Dot. Same things. Thus it's not really a choice, update() is just a shortcut.

The dot operator does some magic (idk, it looks like smth related to the cache and computed fields) and calls write() eventually.

As to the method write itself, it actually saves the changes.

Most of the time you want to use the dot operator and sometimes you need write().

You might notice that update() applies changes field by field and it's not what you want when you have a constraint that depends on a bunch of fields. In this cause you need to use write() directly to update all fields in one go.

Example:

feature_x_enabled = fields.Boolean()
feature_x_required_field = fields.Char()

@api.constrains('feature_x_enabled', 'feature_x_required_field')
def _ensure_feature_x_fields_consistency(self):
    for record in self:
        if record.feature_x_enabled and not record.feature_x_required_field:
            raise ValidationError('Feature X has not been set up correctly.')

# This doesn't work.
record.update({'feature_x_enabled': True, 'feature_x_required_field': 'smth'})

# This works!
record.write({'feature_x_enabled': True, 'feature_x_required_field': 'smth'})

v16