Odoo Docs

OpenERP Server Developers
Documentation
Release 7.0b
OpenERP s.a.
Nov 06, 2017

Contents
1 OpenERP Server 1
1.1 Getting started with OpenERP development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Security in OpenERP: users, groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
1.5 Test framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
1.6 Miscellanous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
1.7 Deploying with Gunicorn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
2 OpenERP Server API 75

2.1 ORM and models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
3 Concepts 77
i
ii
CHAPTER 1
OpenERP Server
1.1 Getting started with OpenERP development
1.1.1 Installation from sources
Source code is hosted on Launchpad. In order to get the sources, you will need Bazaar to pull the source from
Launchpad. Bazaar is a version control system that helps you track project history over time and collaborate efficiently.
You may have to create an account on Launchpad to be able to collaborate on OpenERP development. Please refer to
the Launchpad and Bazaar documentation to install and setup your development environment.
The running example of this section is based on an Ubuntu environment. You may have to adapt the steps according
to your system. Once your working environment is ready, prepare a working directory that will contain the sources.
For a source base directory, type:
mkdir source;cd source
OpenERP provides a setup script that automatizes the tasks of creating a shared repository and getting the source code.
Get the setup script of OpenERP by typing:
bzr cat -d lp:~openerp-dev/openerp-tools/trunk setup.sh | sh
This will create the following two files in your source directory:
-rw-rw-r-- 1 openerp openerp 5465 2012-04-17 11:05 Makefile

-rw-rw-r-- 1 openerp openerp 2902 2012-04-17 11:05 Makefile_helper.py
If you want some help about the available options, please type:
make help
Next step is to initialize the shared repository and download the sources. Get the current trunk version of OpenERP
by typing:
1
OpenERP Server Developers Documentation, Release 7.0b
make init-trunk
This will create the following structure inside your source directory, and fetch the latest source code from trunk:
drwxrwxr-x 3 openerp openerp 4096 2012-04-17 11:10 addons
drwxrwxr-x 3 openerp openerp 4096 2012-04-17 11:10 misc
drwxrwxr-x 3 openerp openerp 4096 2012-04-17 11:10 server
drwxrwxr-x 3 openerp openerp 4096 2012-04-17 11:10 web
Some dependencies are necessary to use OpenERP. Depending on your environment, you might have to install the
following packages:
sudo apt-get install graphviz ghostscript postgresql-client \
python-dateutil python-feedparser python-gdata \
python-ldap python-libxslt1 python-lxml python-mako \
python-openid python-psycopg2 python-pybabel python-pychart \
python-pydot python-pyparsing python-reportlab python-simplejson \
python-tz python-vatnumber python-vobject python-webdav \
python-werkzeug python-xlwt python-yaml python-imaging \
python-matplotlib
Next step is to initialize the database. This will create a new openerp role:
make db-setup
Finally, launch the OpenERP server:

make server
Testing your installation can be done on http://localhost:8069/. You should see the OpenERP main login page.
1.1.2 Command line options
Using the command

./openerp-server --help
General Options
--version show program version number and exit

-h, --help show this help message and exit
-c CONFIG, --config=CONFIG specify alternate config file
-s, --save save configuration to ~/.terp_serverrc
-v, --verbose enable debugging
--pidfile=PIDFILE file where the server pid will be stored
--logfile=LOGFILE file where the server log will be stored
-n INTERFACE, --interface=INTERFACE specify the TCP IP address
-p PORT, --port=PORT specify the TCP port
--net_interface=NETINTERFACE specify the TCP IP address for netrpc
--net_port=NETPORT specify the TCP port for netrpc
--no-netrpc disable netrpc
--no-xmlrpc disable xmlrpc
-i INIT, --init=INIT init a module (use "all" for all modules)
--without-demo=WITHOUT_DEMO load demo data for a module (use "all" for all
˓→modules)
2 Chapter 1. OpenERP Server

-u UPDATE, --update=UPDATE update a module (use "all" for all modules)

--stop-after-init stop the server after it initializes
--debug enable debug mode
-S, --secure launch server over https instead of http
--smtp=SMTP_SERVER specify the SMTP server for sending mail
Database related options
-d DB_NAME, --database=DB_NAME
specify the database name
-r DB_USER, --db_user=DB_USER
specify the database user name
-w DB_PASSWORD, --db_password=DB_PASSWORD
specify the database password
--pg_path=PG_PATH specify the pg executable path
--db_host=DB_HOST specify the database host
--db_port=DB_PORT specify the database port
Internationalization options
Use these options to translate OpenERP to another language.See i18n section of the user manual. Option ‘-l’ is
mandatory.:
-l LANGUAGE, --language=LANGUAGE
specify the language of the translation file. Use it
with --i18n-export and --i18n-import
--i18n-export=TRANSLATE_OUT
export all sentences to be translated to a CSV file
and exit
--i18n-import=TRANSLATE_IN
import a CSV file with translations and exit
--modules=TRANSLATE_MODULES
specify modules to export. Use in combination with
--i18n-export
Options from previous versions
Some options were removed in OpenERP version 6. For example, price_accuracy is now configured through the
decimal_accuracy screen.
1.1.3 Configuration
Two configuration files are available:

• one for the client: ~/.openerprc
• one for the server: ~/.openerp_serverrc
If they are not found, the server and the client will start with a default configuration. Those files follow the convention
used by python’s ConfigParser module. Please note that lines beginning with “#” or ”;” are comments. The client
configuration file is automatically generated upon the first start. The sezrver configuration file can automatically be
created using the command
1.1. Getting started with OpenERP development 3

./openerp-server -s or ./openerp-server --save
You can specify alternate configuration files with
-c CONFIG, --config=CONFIG specify alternate config file
Configure addons locations
By default, the only directory of addons known by the server is server/bin/addons. It is possible to add new addons by
• copying them in server/bin/addons, or creating a symbolic link to each of them in this directory, or
• specifying another directory containing addons to the server. The later can be accomplished either by running
the server with the --addons-path= option, or by configuring this option in the openerp_serverrc file, auto-
matically generated under Linux in your home directory by the server when executed with the --save option.
You can provide several addons to the addons_path = option, separating them using commas.
1.1.4 Start-up script
New in version 6.1.

To run the OpenERP server, the conventional approach is to use the openerp-server script. It loads the openerp
library, sets a few configuration variables corresponding to command-line arguments, and starts to listen to incoming
connections from clients.
Depending on your deployment needs, you can write such a start-up script very easily. We also recommend you take
a look at an alternative tool called openerp-command that can, among other things, launch the server.
Yet another alternative is to use a WSGI-compatible HTTP server and let it call into one of the WSGI entry points of
the server.
1.2 Architecture
1.2.1 OpenERP as a multitenant three-tiers architecture
This section presents the OpenERP architecture along with technology details of the application. The tiers composing
OpenERP are presented. Communication means and protocols between the application components are also presented.
Some details about used development languages and technology stack are then summarized.
OpenERP is a multitenant, three-tiers architecture: database tier for data storage, application tier for processing and
functionalities and presentation tier providing user interface. Those are separate layers inside OpenERP. The applica-
tion tier itself is written as a core; multiple additional modules can be installed in order to create a particular instance
of OpenERP adapted to specific needs and requirements. Moreover, OpenERP follows the Model-View-Controller
(MVC) architectural pattern.
A typical deployment of OpenERP is shown on Figure 1. This deployment is called Web embedded deployment. As
shown, an OpenERP system consists of three main components:
• a PostgreSQL database server which contains all OpenERP databases. Databases contain all application data,
and also most of the OpenERP system configuration elements. Note that this server can possibly be deployed
using clustered databases.

• the OpenERP Server, which contains all the enterprise logic and ensures that OpenERP runs optimally. One
layer of the server is dedicated to communicate and interface with the PostgreSQL database, the ORM engine.
Another layer allows communications between the server and a web browser, the Web layer. Having more than
one server is possible, for example in conjunction with a load balancing mechanism.
• the client running in the a web browser as javascript application.
The database server and the OpenERP server can be installed on the same computer, or distributed onto separate
computer servers, for example for performance considerations.
Fig. 1.1: OpenERP 6.1 architecture for embedded web deployment
The next subsections give details about the different tiers of the OpenERP architecture.
PostgreSQL database
The data tier of OpenERP is provided by a PostgreSQL relational database. While direct SQL queries can be exe-
cuted from OpenERP modules, most accesses to the relational database are done through the server Object Relational
Mapping layer.
Databases contain all application data, and also most of the OpenERP system configuration elements. Note that this
server can possibly be deployed using clustered databases.
OpenERP server
OpenERP provides an application server on which specific business applications can be built. It is also a complete
development framework, offering a range of features to write those applications. Among those features, the OpenERP
ORM provides functionalities and an interface on top of the PostgreSQL server. The OpenERP server also features a
specific layer designed to communicate with the web browser-based client. This layer connects users using standard
browsers to the server.
From a developer perspective, the server acts both as a library which brings the above benefits while hiding the low-
level details, and as a simple way to install, configure and run the written applications. The server also contains other
services, such as extensible data models and view, workflow engine or reports engine. However, those are OpenERP
services not specifically related to security, and are therefore not discussed in details in this document.
1.2. Architecture 5
Server - ORM
The Object Relational Mapping ORM layer is one of the salient features of the OpenERP Server. It provides additional
and essential functionalities on top of PostgreSQL server. Data models are described in Python and OpenERP creates
the underlying database tables using this ORM. All the benefits of RDBMS such as unique constraints, relational
integrity or efficient querying are used and completed by Python flexibility. For instance, arbitrary constraints written
in Python can be added to any model. Different modular extensibility mechanisms are also afforded by OpenERP.
It is important to understand the ORM responsibility before attempting to by-pass it and to access directly the under-
lying database via raw SQL queries. When using the ORM, OpenERP can make sure the data remains free of any
corruption. For instance, a module can react to data creation in a particular table. This behavior can occur only if
queries go through the ORM.
The services granted by the ORM are among other :
• consistency validation by powerful validity checks,
• providing an interface on objects (methods, references, ...) allowing to design and implement efficient modules,
• row-level security per user and group; more details about users and user groups are given in the section Users
and User Roles,
• complex actions on a group of resources,
• inheritance service allowing fine modeling of new resources
Server - Web
The web layer offers an interface to communicate with standard browsers. In the 6.1 version of OpenERP, the web-
client has been rewritten and integrated into the OpenERP server tier. This web layer is a WSGI-compatible application
based on werkzeug. It handles regular http queries to server static file or dynamic content and JSON-RPC queries for
the RPC made from the browser.
Modules
By itself, the OpenERP server is a core. For any enterprise, the value of OpenERP lies in its different modules. The
role of the modules is to implement any business requirement. The server is the only necessary component to add
modules. Any official OpenERP release includes a lot of modules, and hundreds of modules are available thanks to
the community. Examples of such modules are Account, CRM, HR, Marketing, MRP, Sale, etc.
Clients
As the application logic is mainly contained server-side, the client is conceptually simple. It issues a request to the
server, gets data back and display the result (e.g. a list of customers) in different ways (as forms, lists, calendars, ...).
Upon user actions, it sends queries to modify data to the server.
The default client of OpenERP is an JavaScript application running in the browser that communicates with the server
using JSON-RPC.
1.2.2 MVC architecture in OpenERP
According to Wikipedia, “a Model-view-controller (MVC) is an architectural pattern used in software engineering”.

In complex computer applications presenting lots of data to the user, one often wishes to separate data (model) and
user interface (view) concerns. Changes to the user interface does therefore not impact data management, and data
can be reorganized without changing the user interface. The model-view-controller solves this problem by decoupling
data access and business logic from data presentation and user interaction, by introducing an intermediate component:
the controller.

Fig. 1.2: Model-View-Controller diagram
For example in the diagram above, the solid lines for the arrows starting from the controller and going to both the view
and the model mean that the controller has a complete access to both the view and the model. The dashed line for the
arrow going from the view to the controller means that the view has a limited access to the controller. The reasons of
this design are :
• From View to Model : the model sends notification to the view when its data has been modified in order the
view to redraw its content. The model doesn’t need to know the inner workings of the view to perform this
operation. However, the view needs to access the internal parts of the model.
• From View to Controller : the reason why the view has limited access to the controller is because the depen-
dencies from the view to the controller need to be minimal: the controller can be replaced at any moment.
OpenERP follows the MVC semantic with
• model : The PostgreSQL tables.
• view : views are defined in XML files in OpenERP.
• controller : The objects of OpenERP.
1.2.3 Network communications and WSGI
OpenERP is an HTTP web server and may also be deployed as an WSGI-compliant application.
Clients may communicate with OpenERP using sessionless XML-RPC, the recommended way to interoperate with
OpenERP. Web-based clients communicates using the session aware JSON-RPC.
Everything in OpenERP, and objects methods in particular, are exposed via the network and a security layer. Access
to the data model is in fact a ‘service’ and it is possible to expose new services. For instance, a WebDAV service and
a FTP service are available.
Services can make use of the WSGI stack. WSGI is a standard solution in the Python ecosystem to write HTTP
servers, applications, and middleware which can be used in a mix-and-match fashion. By using WSGI, it is possible
to run OpenERP in any WSGI compliant server. It is also possible to use OpenERP to host a WSGI application.
A striking example of this possibility is the OpenERP Web layer that is the server-side counter part to the web clients.
It provides the requested data to the browser and manages web sessions. It is a WSGI-compliant application. As such,
it can be run as a stand-alone HTTP server or embedded inside OpenERP.
The HTTP namespaces /openerp/ /object/ /common/ are reserved for the XML-RPC layer, every module restrict it’s
HTTP namespace to /<name_of_the_module>/
1.3 Modules
1.3.1 Module structure
A module can contain the following elements:
1.3. Modules 7
• Business object : declared as Python classes extending the class osv.Model, the persistence of these resource is
completly managed by OpenERP’s ORM.
• Data : XML/CSV files with meta-data (views and workflows declaration), configuration data (modules
parametrization) and demo data (optional but recommended for testing),
• Reports : RML (XML format). HTML/MAKO or OpenOffice report templates, to be merged with any kind of
business data, and generate HTML, ODT or PDF reports.
Fig. 1.3: Module composition
Each module is contained in its own directory within either the server/bin/addons directory or another directory of
addons, configured in server installation. To create a new module for example the ‘OpenAcademy’ module, the
following steps are required:
• create a openacademy subdirectory in the source/addons directory
• create the module import file __init__.py
• create the module manifield file __openerp__.py
• create Python files containing objects
• create .xml files holding module data such as views, menu entries or demo data
• optionally create reports or workflows
Python import file __init__.py
The __init__.py file is the Python import file, because an OpenERP module is also a regular Python module. The
file should import all the other python file or submodules.
For example, if a module contains a single python file named openacademy.py, the file should look like:
import openacademy
Manifest file __openerp__.py
In the created module directory, you must add a __openerp__.py file. This file, which must be a Python dict literal, is
responsible to
1. determine the XML files that will be parsed during the initialization of the server, and also to
2. determine the dependencies of the created module.
3. declare additional meta data

This file must contain a Python dictionary with the following values:
name The name of the module in English.
version The version of the module.
summary Short description or keywords
description The module description (text).
category The categrory of the module
author The author of the module.
website URL of the website of the module.
license The license of the module (default: AGPL-3).
depends List of modules on which this module depends beside base.
data List of .xml files to load when the module is installed or updated.
demo List of additional .xml files to load when the module is
installed or updated and demo flag is active.
installable True or False. Determines whether the module is installable
or not.
auto_install True or False (default: False). If set to ``True``, the
module is a link module. It will be installed as soon
as all its dependencies are installed.
For the openacademy module, here is an example of __openerp__.py declaration file:

{
'name' : "OpenAcademy",
'version' : "1.0",
'author' : "OpenERP SA",
'category' : "Tools",
'depends' : ['mail'],
'data' : [
'openacademy_view.xml',
'openacademy_data.xml',
'report/module_report.xml',
'wizard/module_wizard.xml',
],
'demo' : [
'openacademy_demo.xml'
],
'installable': True,
}
Objects
All OpenERP resources are objects: invoices, partners. Metadata are also object too: menus, actions, reports... Object
names are hierarchical, as in the following examples:
• account.transfer : a money transfer
• account.invoice : an invoice
• account.invoice.line : an invoice line
Generally, the first word is the name of the module: account, stock, sale.
Those object are declared in python be subclassing osv.Model
The ORM of OpenERP is constructed over PostgreSQL. It is thus possible to query the object used by OpenERP using
the object interface (ORM) or by directly using SQL statements.
But it is dangerous to write or read directly in the PostgreSQL database, as you will shortcut important steps like
constraints checking or workflow modification.
1.3. Modules 9
XML Files
XML files located in the module directory are used to initialize or update the the database when the module is installed
or updated. They are used for many purposes, among which we can cite :
• initialization and demonstration data declaration,
• views declaration,
• reports declaration,
• workflows declaration.
General structure of OpenERP XML files is more detailed in the xml-serialization section. Look here if you are
interested in learning more about initialization and demonstration data declaration XML files. The following section
are only related to XML specific to actions, menu entries, reports, wizards and workflows declaration.
Data can be inserted or updated into the PostgreSQL tables corresponding to the OpenERP objects using XML files.
The general structure of an OpenERP XML file is as follows:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<openerp>
<data>
<record model="model.name_1" id="id_name_1">
<field name="field1"> "field1 content" </field>
<field name="field2"> "field2 content" </field>
(...)
</record>
<record model="model.name_2" id="id_name_2">
(...)
</record>
(...)
</data>
</openerp>
Record Tag
Description
The addition of new data is made with the record tag. This one takes a mandatory attribute : model. Model is the
object name where the insertion has to be done. The tag record can also take an optional attribute: id. If this attribute
is given, a variable of this name can be used later on, in the same file, to make reference to the newly created resource
ID.
A record tag may contain field tags. They indicate the record’s fields value. If a field is not specified the default value
will be used.
The Record Field tag
The attributes for the field tag are the following:

name [mandatory] the field name
eval [optional] python expression that indicating the value to add
ref reference to an id defined in this file
model model to be looked up in the search

search a query
Example
<record model="ir.actions.report.xml" id="l0">

<field name="model">account.invoice</field>
<field name="name">Invoices List</field>
<field name="report_name">account.invoice.list</field>
<field name="report_xsl">account/report/invoice.xsl</field>
<field name="report_xml">account/report/invoice.xml</field>
</record>
Let’s review an example taken from the OpenERP source (base_demo.xml in the base module):
<record model="res.company" id="main_company">

<field name="name">Tiny sprl</field>
<field name="partner_id" ref="main_partner"/>
<field name="currency_id" ref="EUR"/>
</record>
<record model="res.users" id="user_admin">

<field name="login">admin</field>
<field name="password">admin</field>
<field name="name">Administrator</field>
<field name="signature">Administrator</field>
<field name="action_id" ref="action_menu_admin"/>
<field name="menu_id" ref="action_menu_admin"/>
<field name="address_id" ref="main_address"/>
<field name="groups_id" eval="[(6,0,[group_admin])]"/>
<field name="company_id" ref="main_company"/>
</record>
This last record defines the admin user :

• The fields login, password, etc are straightforward.
• The ref attribute allows to fill relations between the records :
<field name="company_id" ref="main_company"/>
The field company_id is a many-to-one relation from the user object to the company object, and main_company is
the id of to associate.
• The eval attribute allows to put some python code in the xml: here the groups_id field is a many2many. For
such a field, “[(6,0,[group_admin])]” means : Remove all the groups associated with the current user and use
the list [group_admin] as the new associated groups (and group_admin is the id of another record).
• The search attribute allows to find the record to associate when you do not know its xml id. You can thus specify
a search criteria to find the wanted record. The criteria is a list of tuples of the same form than for the predefined
search method. If there are several results, an arbitrary one will be chosen (the first one):
<field name="partner_id" search="[]" model="res.partner"/>
This is a classical example of the use of search in demo data: here we do not really care about which partner we want
to use for the test, so we give an empty list. Notice the model attribute is currently mandatory.
1.3. Modules 11
Function tag
A function tag can contain other function tags.

model [mandatory] The model to be used
name [mandatory] the function given name
eval should evaluate to the list of parameters of the method to be called, excluding cr and uid
Example
<function model="ir.ui.menu" name="search" eval="[[('name','=','Operations')]]"/>
Views
Views are a way to represent the objects on the client side. They indicate to the client how to lay out the data coming
from the objects on the screen.
There are two types of views:
• form views
• tree views
Lists are simply a particular case of tree views.
A same object may have several views: the first defined view of a kind (tree, form, ...) will be used as the default view
for this kind. That way you can have a default tree view (that will act as the view of a one2many) and a specialized
view with more or less information that will appear when one double-clicks on a menu item. For example, the products
have several views according to the product variants.
Views are described in XML.
If no view has been defined for an object, the object is able to generate a view to represent itself. This can limit the
developer’s work but results in less ergonomic views.
Usage example
When you open an invoice, here is the chain of operations followed by the client:
• An action asks to open the invoice (it gives the object’s data (account.invoice), the view, the domain (e.g. only
unpaid invoices) ).
• The client asks (with XML-RPC) to the server what views are defined for the invoice object and what are the
data it must show.
• The client displays the form according to the view
To develop new objects
The design of new objects is restricted to the minimum: create the objects and optionally create the views to represent
them. The PostgreSQL tables do not have to be written by hand because the objects are able to automatically create
them (or adapt them in case they already exist).

Reports
OpenERP uses a flexible and powerful reporting system. Reports are generated either in PDF or in HTML. Reports
are designed on the principle of separation between the data layer and the presentation layer.
Reports are described more in details in the Reporting chapter.
Workflow
The objects and the views allow you to define new forms very simply, lists/trees and interactions between them. But
that is not enough, you must define the dynamics of these objects.
A few examples:
• a confirmed sale order must generate an invoice, according to certain conditions
• a paid invoice must, only under certain conditions, start the shipping order
The workflows describe these interactions with graphs. One or several workflows may be associated to the objects.
Workflows are not mandatory; some objects don’t have workflows.
Below is an example workflow used for sale orders. It must generate invoices and shipments according to certain
conditions.
In this graph, the nodes represent the actions to be done:
• create an invoice,
• cancel the sale order,
• generate the shipping order, ...
The arrows are the conditions;
• waiting for the order validation,
• invoice paid,
• click on the cancel button, ...
The squared nodes represent other Workflows;
• the invoice
• the shipping
i18n
Changed in version 5.0.

Each module has its own i18n folder. In addition, OpenERP can now deal with .po1 files as import/export format.
The translation files of the installed languages are automatically loaded when installing or updating a module.
Translations are managed by the Launchpad Web interface. Here, you’ll find the list of translatable projects.
Please read the FAQ before asking questions.
1 http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/gettext/PO-Files.html#PO-Files
1.3. Modules 13
1.3.2 Objects, Fields and Methods
OpenERP Objects
All the ERP’s pieces of data are accessible through “objects”. As an example, there is a res.partner object to access
the data concerning the partners, an account.invoice object for the data concerning the invoices, etc...
Please note that there is an object for every type of resource, and not an object per resource. We have thus a res.partner
object to manage all the partners and not a res.partner object per partner. If we talk in “object oriented” terms, we
could also say that there is an object per level.
The direct consequences is that all the methods of objects have a common parameter: the “ids” parameter. This
specifies on which resources (for example, on which partner) the method must be applied. Precisely, this parameter
contains a list of resource ids on which the method must be applied.
For example, if we have two partners with the identifiers 1 and 5, and we want to call the res_partner method
“send_email”, we will write something like:
res_partner.send_email(... , [1, 5], ...)
We will see the exact syntax of object method calls further in this document.
In the following section, we will see how to define a new object. Then, we will check out the different methods of
doing this.
For developers:
• OpenERP “objects” are usually called classes in object oriented programming.
• A OpenERP “resource” is usually called an object in OO programming, instance of a class.
It’s a bit confusing when you try to program inside OpenERP, because the language used is Python, and Python is a
fully object oriented language, and has objects and instances ...
Luckily, an OpenERP “resource” can be converted magically into a nice Python object using the “browse” class
method (OpenERP object method).
The ORM - Object-relational mapping - Models
The ORM, short for Object-Relational Mapping, is a central part of OpenERP.

In OpenERP, the data model is described and manipulated through Python classes and objects. It is the ORM job to
bridge the gap – as transparently as possible for the developer – between Python and the underlying relational database
(PostgreSQL), which will provide the persistence we need for our objects.
OpenERP Object Attributes
Objects Introduction
To define a new object, you must define a new Python class then instantiate it. This class must inherit from the osv
class in the osv module.
Object definition
The first line of the object definition will always be of the form:

class name_of_the_object(osv.osv):
_name = 'name.of.the.object'
_columns = { ... }
...
name_of_the_object()
An object is defined by declaring some fields with predefined names in the class. Two of them are required (_name
and _columns), the rest are optional. The predefined fields are:
Predefined fields
_auto Determines whether a corresponding PostgreSQL table must be generated automatically from the object. Set-
ting _auto to False can be useful in case of OpenERP objects generated from PostgreSQL views. See the
“Reporting From PostgreSQL Views” section for more details.
_columns (required) The object fields. See the fields section for further details.
_constraints The constraints on the object. See the constraints section for details.
_sql_constraints The SQL Constraint on the object. See the SQL constraints section for further details.
_defaults The default values for some of the object’s fields. See the default value section for details.
_inherit The name of the osv object which the current object inherits from. See the object inheritance section (first
form) for further details.
_inherits The list of osv objects the object inherits from. This list must be given in a python dictionary of the form:
{‘name_of_the_parent_object’: ‘name_of_the_field’, ...}. See the object inheritance section (second form) for
further details. Default value: {}.
_log_access Determines whether or not the write access to the resource must be logged. If true, four fields will be
created in the SQL table: create_uid, create_date, write_uid, write_date. Those fields represent respectively the
id of the user who created the record, the creation date of record, the id of the user who last modified the record,
and the date of that last modification. This data may be obtained by using the perm_read method.
_name (required) Name of the object. Default value: None.
_order Name of the fields used to sort the results of the search and read methods.
Default value: ‘id’.
Examples:
_order = "name"
_order = "date_order desc"
_rec_name Name of the field in which the name of every resource is stored. Default value: ‘name’. Note: by default,
the name_get method simply returns the content of this field.
_sequence Name of the SQL sequence that manages the ids for this object. Default value: None.
_sql SQL code executed upon creation of the object (only if _auto is True). It means this code gets executed after the
table is created.
_table Name of the SQL table. Default value: the value of the _name field above with the dots ( . ) replaced by
underscores ( _ ).
1.3. Modules 15
Object Inheritance - _inherit
Introduction
Objects may be inherited in some custom or specific modules. It is better to inherit an object to add/modify some
fields.
It is done with:
_inherit='object.name'
Extension of an object
There are two possible ways to do this kind of inheritance. Both ways result in a new class of data, which holds parent
fields and behaviour as well as additional fields and behaviour, but they differ in heavy programatical consequences.
While Example 1 creates a new subclass “custom_material” that may be “seen” or “used” by any view or tree which
handles “network.material”, this will not be the case for Example 2.
This is due to the table (other.material) the new subclass is operating on, which will never be recognized by previous
“network.material” views or trees.
Example 1:
class custom_material(osv.osv):
_name = 'network.material'
_inherit = 'network.material'
_columns = {
'manuf_warranty': fields.boolean('Manufacturer warranty?'),
}
_defaults = {
'manuf_warranty': lambda *a: False,
}
custom_material()
Tip: Notice
_name == _inherit
In this example, the ‘custom_material’ will add a new field ‘manuf_warranty’ to the object ‘network.material’. New
instances of this class will be visible by views or trees operating on the superclasses table ‘network.material’.
This inheritancy is usually called “class inheritance” in Object oriented design. The child inherits data (fields) and
behavior (functions) of his parent.
Example 2:
class other_material(osv.osv):
_name = 'other.material'
_inherit = 'network.material'
_columns = {
'manuf_warranty': fields.boolean('Manufacturer warranty?'),
}
_defaults = {
'manuf_warranty': lambda *a: False,

}
other_material()
Tip: Notice
_name != _inherit
In this example, the ‘other_material’ will hold all fields specified by ‘network.material’ and it will additionally hold a
new field ‘manuf_warranty’. All those fields will be part of the table ‘other.material’. New instances of this class will
therefore never been seen by views or trees operating on the superclasses table ‘network.material’.
This type of inheritancy is known as “inheritance by prototyping” (e.g. Javascript), because the newly created subclass
“copies” all fields from the specified superclass (prototype). The child inherits data (fields) and behavior (functions)
of his parent.
Inheritance by Delegation - _inherits
Syntax ::
class tiny_object(osv.osv)
_name = 'tiny.object'
_table = 'tiny_object'
_inherits = {
'tiny.object_a': 'object_a_id',
'tiny.object_b': 'object_b_id',
... ,
'tiny.object_n': 'object_n_id'
}
(...)
The object ‘tiny.object’ inherits from all the columns and all the methods from the n objects ‘tiny.object_a’, ...,
‘tiny.object_n’.
To inherit from multiple tables, the technique consists in adding one column to the table tiny_object per inherited
object. This column will store a foreign key (an id from another table). The values ‘object_a_id’ ‘object_b_id’ ...
‘object_n_id’ are of type string and determine the title of the columns in which the foreign keys from ‘tiny.object_a’,
..., ‘tiny.object_n’ are stored.
This inheritance mechanism is usually called ” instance inheritance ” or ” value inheritance ”. A resource (instance)
has the VALUES of its parents.
Fields Introduction
Objects may contain different types of fields. Those types can be divided into three categories: simple types, relation
types and functional fields. The simple types are integers, floats, booleans, strings, etc ... ; the relation types are used
to represent relations between objects (one2one, one2many, many2one). Functional fields are special fields because
they are not stored in the database but calculated in real time given other fields of the view.
Here’s the header of the initialization method of the class any field defined in OpenERP inherits (as you can see in
server/bin/osv/fields.py):
def __init__(self, string='unknown', required=False, readonly=False,
domain=None, context="", states=None, priority=0, change_default=False,
˓→size=None,
ondelete="set null", translate=False, select=False, **args) :
1.3. Modules 17
There are a common set of optional parameters that are available to most field types:
change_default Whether or not the user can define default values on other fields depending on the value
of this field. Those default values need to be defined in the ir.values table.
help A description of how the field should be used: longer and more descriptive than string. It will appear
in a tooltip when the mouse hovers over the field.
ondelete How to handle deletions in a related record. Allowable values are: ‘restrict’, ‘no action’, ‘cas-
cade’, ‘set null’, and ‘set default’.
priority Not used?
readonly True if the user cannot edit this field, otherwise False.
required True if this field must have a value before the object can be saved, otherwise False.
size The size of the field in the database: number characters or digits.
states Lets you override other parameters for specific states of this object. Accepts a dictionary
with the state names as keys and a list of name/value tuples as the values. For example:
states={‘posted’:[(‘readonly’,True)]}
string The field name as it should appear in a label or column header. Strings containing non-ASCII
characters must use python unicode objects. For example: ‘tested’: fields.boolean(u’Testé’)
translate True if the content of this field should be translated, otherwise False.
There are also some optional parameters that are specific to some field types:
context Define a variable’s value visible in the view’s context or an on-change function. Used when
searching child table of one2many relationship?
domain Domain restriction on a relational field.
Default value: [].
Example: domain=[(‘field’,’=’,value)])
invisible Hide the field’s value in forms. For example, a password.
on_change Default value for the on_change attribute in the view. This will launch a function on the server
when the field changes in the client. For example, on_change=”onchange_shop_id(shop_id)”.
relation Used when a field is an id reference to another table. This is the name of the table to look in.
Most commonly used with related and function field types.
select Default value for the select attribute in the view. 1 means basic search, and 2 means advanced
search.
Type of Fields
Basic Types
boolean A boolean (true, false).

Syntax:
fields.boolean('Field Name' [, Optional Parameters]),

integer An integer.
Syntax:
fields.integer('Field Name' [, Optional Parameters]),
float A floating point number.

Syntax:
fields.float('Field Name' [, Optional Parameters]),
Note: The optional parameter digits defines the precision and scale of the number. The scale being
the number of digits after the decimal point whereas the precision is the total number of significant
digits in the number (before and after the decimal point). If the parameter digits is not present, the
number will be a double precision floating point number. Warning: these floating-point numbers are
inexact (not any value can be converted to its binary representation) and this can lead to rounding
errors. You should always use the digits parameter for monetary amounts.
Example:
'rate': fields.float(
'Relative Change rate',
digits=(12,6) [,
Optional Parameters]),
char A string of limited length. The required size parameter determines its size.
Syntax:
fields.char(
'Field Name',
size=n [,
Optional Parameters]), # where ''n'' is an integer.
Example:
'city' : fields.char('City Name', size=30, required=True),
text A text field with no limit in length.

Syntax:
fields.text('Field Name' [, Optional Parameters]),
date A date.
Syntax:
fields.date('Field Name' [, Optional Parameters]),
datetime Allows to store a date and the time of day in the same field.
Syntax:
fields.datetime('Field Name' [, Optional Parameters]),
binary A binary chain
1.3. Modules 19
selection A field which allows the user to make a selection between various predefined values.
Syntax:
fields.selection((('n','Unconfirmed'), ('c','Confirmed')),
'Field Name' [, Optional Parameters]),
Note: Format of the selection parameter: tuple of tuples of strings of the form:
(('key_or_value', 'string_to_display'), ... )
Note: You can specify a function that will return the tuple. Example
def _get_selection(self, cursor, user_id, context=None):

return (
('choice1', 'This is the choice 1'),
('choice2', 'This is the choice 2'))
_columns = {
'sel' : fields.selection(
_get_selection,
'What do you want ?')
}
Example
Using relation fields many2one with selection. In fields definitions add:
...,
'my_field': fields.many2one(
'mymodule.relation.model',
'Title',
selection=_sel_func),
...,
And then define the _sel_func like this (but before the fields definitions):
def _sel_func(self, cr, uid, context=None):

obj = self.pool.get('mymodule.relation.model')
ids = obj.search(cr, uid, [])
res = obj.read(cr, uid, ids, ['name', 'id'], context)
res = [(r['id'], r['name']) for r in res]
return res
Relational Types
one2one A one2one field expresses a one:to:one relation between two objects. It is deprecated. Use
many2one instead.
Syntax:
fields.one2one('other.object.name', 'Field Name')

many2one Associates this object to a parent object via this Field. For example Department an Employee
belongs to would Many to one. i.e Many employees will belong to a Department
Syntax:
fields.many2one(
'other.object.name',
'Field Name',
optional parameters)
Optional parameters:
• ondelete: What should happen when the resource this field points to is deleted.
– Predefined value: “cascade”, “set null”, “restrict”, “no action”, “set default”
– Default value: “set null”
• required: True
• readonly: True
• select: True - (creates an index on the Foreign Key field)
Example
'commercial': fields.many2one(
'res.users',
'Commercial',
ondelete='cascade'),
one2many TODO
Syntax:
fields.one2many(
'other.object.name',
'Field relation id',
'Fieldname',
optional parameter)
Optional parameters:
• invisible: True/False
• states: ?
• readonly: True/False
Example
'address': fields.one2many(
'res.partner.address',
'partner_id',
'Contacts'),
many2many TODO
Syntax:
fields.many2many('other.object.name',
'relation object',
'actual.object.id',
1.3. Modules 21
'other.object.id',
'Field Name')
Where:
• other.object.name is the other object which belongs to the relation
• relation object is the table that makes the link
• actual.object.id and other.object.id are the fields’ names used in the relation table
Example:
'category_ids':
fields.many2many(
'res.partner.category',
'res_partner_category_rel',
'partner_id',
'category_id',
'Categories'),
To make it bidirectional (= create a field in the other object):
class other_object_name2(osv.osv):
_inherit = 'other.object.name'
_columns = {
'other_fields': fields.many2many(
'actual.object.name',
'relation object',
'actual.object.id',
'other.object.id',
'Other Field Name'),
}
other_object_name2()
Example:
class res_partner_category2(osv.osv):
_inherit = 'res.partner.category'
_columns = {
'partner_ids': fields.many2many(
'res.partner',
'res_partner_category_rel',
'category_id',
'partner_id',
'Partners'),
}
res_partner_category2()
related Sometimes you need to refer to the relation of a relation. For example, supposing you have
objects: City -> State -> Country, and you need to refer to the Country from a City, you can define
a field as below in the City object:
'country_id': fields.related(
'state_id',
'country_id',
type="many2one",
relation="res.country",

string="Country",
store=False)
Where:
• The first set of parameters are the chain of reference fields to follow, with the desired field
at the end.
• type is the type of that desired field.
• Use relation if the desired field is still some kind of reference. relation is the table to look
up that reference in.
Functional Fields
A functional field is a field whose value is calculated by a function (rather than being stored in the database).
Parameters:
fnct, arg=None, fnct_inv=None, fnct_inv_arg=None, type="float",

fnct_search=None, obj=None, method=False, store=False, multi=False
where
• fnct is the function or method that will compute the field value. It must have been declared before declaring the
functional field.
• fnct_inv is the function or method that will allow writing values in that field.
• type is the field type name returned by the function. It can be any field type name except function.
• fnct_search allows you to define the searching behaviour on that field.
• method whether the field is computed by a method (of an object) or a global function
• store If you want to store field in database or not. Default is False.
• multi is a group name. All fields with the same multi parameter will be calculated in a single function call.
fnct parameter
If method is True, the signature of the method must be:
def fnct(self, cr, uid, ids, field_name, arg, context):
otherwise (if it is a global function), its signature must be:
def fnct(cr, table, ids, field_name, arg, context):
Either way, it must return a dictionary of values of the form {id’_1_’: value’_1_’, id’_2_’: value’_2_’,...}.
The values of the returned dictionary must be of the type specified by the type argument in the field declaration.
If multi is set, then field_name is replaced by field_names: a list of the field names that should be calculated. Each
value in the returned dictionary is also a dictionary from field name to value. For example, if the fields ‘name’, and
‘age’ are both based on the vital_statistics function, then the return value of vital_statistics might look like this when
ids is [1, 2, 5]:
1.3. Modules 23
{
1: {'name': 'Bob', 'age': 23},
2: {'name': 'Sally', 'age', 19},
5: {'name': 'Ed', 'age': 62}
}
fnct_inv parameter
If method is true, the signature of the method must be:
def fnct(self, cr, uid, ids, field_name, field_value, arg, context):
otherwise (if it is a global function), it should be:
def fnct(cr, table, ids, field_name, field_value, arg, context):
fnct_search parameter
If method is true, the signature of the method must be:
def fnct(self, cr, uid, obj, name, args, context):
otherwise (if it is a global function), it should be:
def fnct(cr, uid, obj, name, args, context):
The return value is a list containing 3-part tuples which are used in search function:
return [('id','in',[1,3,5])]
obj is the same as self, and name receives the field name. args is a list of 3-part tuples containing search criteria for
this field, although the search function may be called separately for each tuple.
Example
Suppose we create a contract object which is :
class hr_contract(osv.osv):
_name = 'hr.contract'
_description = 'Contract'
_columns = {
'name' : fields.char('Contract Name', size=30, required=True),
'employee_id' : fields.many2one('hr.employee', 'Employee', required=True),
'function' : fields.many2one('res.partner.function', 'Function'),
}
hr_contract()
If we want to add a field that retrieves the function of an employee by looking its current contract, we use a functional
field. The object hr_employee is inherited this way:

class hr_employee(osv.osv):
_name = "hr.employee"
_description = "Employee"
_inherit = "hr.employee"
_columns = {
'contract_ids' : fields.one2many('hr.contract', 'employee_id', 'Contracts'),
'function' : fields.function(
_get_cur_function_id,
type='many2one',
obj="res.partner.function",
method=True,
string='Contract Function'),
}
hr_employee()
Note: three points

• type =’many2one’ is because the function field must create a many2one field; function is declared as a many2one
in hr_contract also.
• obj =”res.partner.function” is used to specify that the object to use for the many2one field is res.partner.function.
• We called our method _get_cur_function_id because its role is to return a dictionary whose keys are ids of
employees, and whose corresponding values are ids of the function of those employees. The code of this
method is:
def _get_cur_function_id(self, cr, uid, ids, field_name, arg, context):

for i in ids:
#get the id of the current function of the employee of identifier "i"
sql_req= """
SELECT f.id AS func_id
FROM hr_contract c
LEFT JOIN res_partner_function f ON (f.id = c.function)
WHERE
(c.employee_id = %d)
""" % (i,)
cr.execute(sql_req)
sql_res = cr.dictfetchone()
if sql_res: #The employee has one associated contract

res[i] = sql_res['func_id']
else:
#res[i] must be set to False and not to None because of XML:RPC
# "cannot marshal None unless allow_none is enabled"
res[i] = False
return res
The id of the function is retrieved using a SQL query. Note that if the query returns no result, the value of
sql_res[’func_id’] will be None. We force the False value in this case value because XML:RPC (communication
between the server and the client) doesn’t allow to transmit this value.
1.3. Modules 25
store Parameter
It will calculate the field and store the result in the table. The field will be recalculated when certain fields are changed
on other objects. It uses the following syntax:
store = {
'object_name': (
function_name,
['field_name1', 'field_name2'],
priority)
}
It will call function function_name when any changes are written to fields in the list [’field1’,’field2’] on object ‘ob-
ject_name’. The function should have the following signature:
def function_name(self, cr, uid, ids, context=None):
Where ids will be the ids of records in the other object’s table that have changed values in the watched fields. The
function should return a list of ids of records in its own table that should have the field recalculated. That list will be
sent as a parameter for the main function of the field.
Here’s an example from the membership module:
'membership_state':
fields.function(
_membership_state,
method=True,
string='Current membership state',
type='selection',
selection=STATE,
store={
'account.invoice': (_get_invoice_partner, ['state'], 10),
'membership.membership_line': (_get_partner_id,['state'], 10),
'res.partner': (
lambda self, cr, uid, ids, c={}: ids,
['free_member'],
10)
}),
Property Fields
Declaring a property
A property is a special field: fields.property.
class res_partner(osv.osv):
_name = "res.partner"
_inherit = "res.partner"
_columns = {
'property_product_pricelist':
fields.property(
'product.pricelist',
type='many2one',
relation='product.pricelist',
string="Sale Pricelist",
method=True,
view_load=True,

group_name="Pricelists Properties"),
}
Then you have to create the default value in a .XML file for this property:
<record model="ir.property" id="property_product_pricelist">

<field name="name">property_product_pricelist</field>
<field name="fields_id" search="[('model','=','res.partner'),
('name','=','property_product_pricelist')]"/>
<field name="value" eval="'product.pricelist,'+str(list0)"/>
</record>
Tip: if the default value points to a resource from another module, you can use the ref function like this:
<field name=”value” eval=“‘product.pricelist,’+str(ref(‘module.data_id’))”/>
Putting properties in forms

To add properties in forms, just put the <properties/> tag in your form. This will automatically add all properties fields
that are related to this object. The system will add properties depending on your rights. (some people will be able to
change a specific property, others won’t).
Properties are displayed by section, depending on the group_name attribute. (It is rendered in the client like a separator
tag).
How does this work ?
The fields.property class inherits from fields.function and overrides the read and write method. The type of this field
is many2one, so in the form a property is represented like a many2one function.
But the value of a property is stored in the ir.property class/table as a complete record. The stored value is a field of
type reference (not many2one) because each property may point to a different object. If you edit properties values
(from the administration menu), these are represented like a field of type reference.
When you read a property, the program gives you the property attached to the instance of object you are reading. If
this object has no value, the system will give you the default property.
The definition of a property is stored in the ir.model.fields class like any other fields. In the definition of the property,
you can add groups that are allowed to change to property.
Using properties or normal fields
When you want to add a new feature, you will have to choose to implement it as a property or as normal field. Use a
normal field when you inherit from an object and want to extend this object. Use a property when the new feature is
not related to the object but to an external concept.
Here are a few tips to help you choose between a normal field or a property:
Normal fields extend the object, adding more features or data.
A property is a concept that is attached to an object and have special features:
• Different value for the same property depending on the company
• Rights management per field
• It’s a link between resources (many2one)
Example 1: Account Receivable
The default “Account Receivable” for a specific partner is implemented as a property because:
1.3. Modules 27
• This is a concept related to the account chart and not to the partner, so it is an account property that is visible on
a partner form. Rights have to be managed on this fields for accountants, these are not the same rights that are
applied to partner objects. So you have specific rights just for this field of the partner form: only accountants
may change the account receivable of a partner.
• This is a multi-company field: the same partner may have different account receivable values depending on the
company the user belongs to. In a multi-company system, there is one account chart per company. The account
receivable of a partner depends on the company it placed the sale order.
• The default account receivable is the same for all partners and is configured from the general property menu (in
administration).
Note: One interesting thing is that properties avoid “spaghetti” code. The account module depends on the partner
(base) module. But you can install the partner (base) module without the accounting module. If you add a field that
points to an account in the partner object, both objects will depend on each other. It’s much more difficult to maintain
and code (for instance, try to remove a table when both tables are pointing to each others.)
Example 2: Product Times

The product expiry module implements all delays related to products: removal date, product usetime, ... This module
is very useful for food industries.
This module inherits from the product.product object and adds new fields to it:
class product_product(osv.osv):
_inherit = 'product.product'
_name = 'product.product'
_columns = {
'life_time': fields.integer('Product lifetime'),

'use_time': fields.integer('Product usetime'),
'removal_time': fields.integer('Product removal time'),
'alert_time': fields.integer('Product alert time'),
}
product_product()
This module adds simple fields to the product.product object. We did not use properties because:
• We extend a product, the life_time field is a concept related to a product, not to another object.
• We do not need a right management per field, the different delays are managed by the same people that manage
all products.
ORM methods
Keeping the context in ORM methods
In OpenObject, the context holds very important data such as the language in which a document must be written,
whether function field needs updating or not, etc.
When calling an ORM method, you will probably already have a context - for example the framework will provide
you with one as a parameter of almost every method. If you do have a context, it is very important that you always
pass it through to every single method you call.

This rule also applies to writing ORM methods. You should expect to receive a context as parameter, and always pass
it through to every other method you call..
1.3.3 Views and Events
Introduction to Views
As all data of the program is stored in objects, as explained in the Objects section, how are these objects exposed to
the user ? We will try to answer this question in this section.
First of all, let’s note that every resource type uses its own interface. For example, the screen to modify a partner’s
data is not the same as the one to modify an invoice.
Then, you have to know that the OpenERP user interface is dynamic, it means that it is not described “statically” by
some code, but dynamically built from XML descriptions of the client screens.
From now on, we will call these screen descriptions views.
A notable characteristic of these views is that they can be edited at any moment (even during the program execution).
After a modification to a displayed view has occurred, you simply need to close the tab corresponding to that ‘view’
and re-open it for the changes to appear.
Views principles
Views describe how each object (type of resource) is displayed. More precisely, for each object, we can define one (or
several) view(s) to describe which fields should be drawn and how.
There are two types of views:
1. form views
2. tree views
Note: Since OpenERP 4.1, form views can also contain graphs.
Form views
The field disposition in a form view always follows the same principle. Fields are distributed on the screen following
the rules below:
• By default, each field is preceded by a label, with its name.
• Fields are placed on the screen from left to right, and from top to bottom, according to the order in which they
are declared in the view.
• Every screen is divided into 4 columns, each column being able to contain either a label, or an “edition” field. As
every edition field is preceded (by default) by a label with its name, there will be two fields (and their respective
labels) on each line of the screen. The green and red zones on the screen-shot below, illustrate those 4 columns.
They designate respectively the labels and their corresponding fields.
Views also support more advanced placement options:
• A view field can use several columns. For example, on the screen-shot below, the zone in the blue frame is, in
fact, the only field of a “one to many”. We will come back later on this note, but let’s note that it uses the whole
width of the screen and not only one column.
1.3. Modules 29
• We can also make the opposite operation: take a columns group and divide it in as many columns as desired.
The surrounded green zones of the screen above are good examples. Precisely, the green framework up and on
the right side takes the place of two columns, but contains 4 columns.
As we can see below in the purple zone of the screen, there is also a way to distribute the fields of an object on different
tabs.
On Change
The on_change attribute defines a method that is called when the content of a view field has changed.
This method takes at least arguments: cr, uid, ids, which are the three classical arguments and also the context dictio-
nary. You can add parameters to the method. They must correspond to other fields defined in the view, and must also
be defined in the XML with fields defined this way:
<field name="name_of_field" on_change="name_of_method(other_field'_1_', ..., other_

˓→field'_n_')"/>
The example below is from the sale order view.

You can use the ‘context’ keyword to access data in the context that can be used as params of the function.:
<field name="shop_id" on_change="onchange_shop_id(shop_id)"/>
def onchange_shop_id(self, cr, uid, ids, shop_id):
v={}
if shop_id:
shop=self.pool.get('sale.shop').browse(cr,uid,shop_id)
v['project_id']=shop.project_id.id
if shop.pricelist_id.id:
v['pricelist_id']=shop.pricelist_id.id
v['payment_default_id']=shop.payment_default_id.id
return {'value':v}
When editing the shop_id form field, the onchange_shop_id method of the sale_order object is called and returns a
dictionary where the ‘value’ key contains a dictionary of the new value to use in the ‘project_id’, ‘pricelist_id’ and
‘payment_default_id’ fields.
Note that it is possible to change more than just the values of fields. For example, it is possible to change the value of
some fields and the domain of other fields by returning a value of the form: return {‘domain’: d, ‘value’: value}
returns a dictionary with any mix of the following keys:
domain A mapping of {field: domain}.
The returned domains should be set on the fields instead of the default ones.
value A mapping of {field: value}}, the values will be set on the corresponding fields
and may trigger new onchanges or attrs changes
warning A dict with the keys title and message. Both are mandatory. Indicate that an er-
ror message should be displayed to the user.

Tree views
These views are used when we work in list mode (in order to visualize several resources at once) and in the search
screen. These views are simpler than the form views and thus have less options.
Search views
Search views are a new feature of OpenERP supported as of version 6.0 It creates a customized search panel, and
is declared quite similarly to a form view, except that the view type and root element change to search instead of
form.
Following is the list of new elements and features supported in search views.
Group tag
Unlike form group elements, search view groups support unlimited number of widget(fields or filters) in a row (no
automatic line wrapping), and only use the following attributes:
• expand: turns on the expander icon on the group (1 for expanded by default, 0 for collapsed)
• string: label for the group
<group expand="1" string="Group By...">

<filter string="Users" icon="terp-project" domain="[]" context="{'group_by':'user_
˓→id'}"/>
<filter string="Project" icon="terp-project" domain="[]" context="{'group_by':

˓→'project_id'}"/>
<separator orientation="vertical"/>
<filter string="Deadline" icon="terp-project" domain="[]" context="{'group_by':
˓→'date_deadline'}"/>
</group>
In the screenshot above the green area is an expandable group.
Filter tag
Filters are displayed as a toggle button on search panel Filter elements can add new values in the current domain or
context of the search view. Filters can be added as a child element of field too, to indicate that they apply specifically
to that field (in this case the button’s icon will smaller)
In the picture above the red area contains filters at the top of the form while the blue area highlights a field and it’s
child filter.
<filter string="Current" domain="[('state','in',('open','draft'))]" help="Draft, Open

˓→and Pending Tasks" icon="terp-project"/>
<field name="project_id" select="1" widget="selection">

<filter domain="[('project_id.user_id','=',uid)]" help="My Projects" icon="terp-
˓→project"/>
</field>
1.3. Modules 31
Group By
<filter string="Project" icon="terp-project" domain="[]" context="{'group_by':

˓→'project_id'}"/>
Above filters groups records sharing the same project_id value. Groups are loaded lazily, so the inner records are
only loaded when the group is expanded. The group header lines contain the common values for all records in that
group, and all numeric fields currently displayed in the view are replaced by the sum of the values in that group.
It is also possible to group on multiple values by specifying a list of fields instead of a single string. In this case nested
groups will be displayed:
<filter string="Project" icon="terp-project" domain="[]" context="{'group_by': [

˓→'project_id', 'user_id'] }"/>
Fields
Field elements in search views are used to get user-provided values for searches. As a result, as for group elements,
they are quite different than form view’s fields:
• a search field can contain filters, which generally indicate that both field and filter manage the same field and
are related.
Those inner filters are rendered as smaller buttons, right next to the field, and must not have a string attribute.
• a search field really builds a domain composed of [(field_name, operator, field_value)]. This
domain can be overridden in two ways:
– @operator replaces the default operator for the field (which depends on its type)
– @filter_domain lets you provide a fully custom domain, which will replace the default domain cre-
ation
• a search field does not create a context by default, but you can provide an @context which will be evaluated
and merged into the wider context (as with a filter element).
To get the value of the field in your @context or @filter_domain, you can use the variable self:
<field name="location_id" string="Location"

filter_domain="['|',('location_id','ilike',self),('location_dest_id','ilike',
˓→self)]"/>
or
<field name="journal_id" widget="selection"

context="{'journal_id':self, 'visible_id':self, 'normal_view':False}"/>
Range fields (date, datetime, time)
The range fields are composed of two input widgets (from and two) instead of just one.
This leads to peculiarities (compared to non-range search fields):
• It is not possible to override the operator of a range field via @operator, as the domain is built of two sections
and each section uses a different operator.

• Instead of being a simple value (integer, string, float) self for use in @filter_domain and @context is
a dict.
Because each input widget of a range field can be empty (and the field itself will still be valid), care must be
taken when using self: it has two string keys "from" and "to", but any of these keys can be either missing
entirely or set to the value False.
Actions for Search view
After declaring a search view, it will be used automatically for all tree views on the same model. If several search
views exist for a single model, the one with the highest priority (lowest sequence) will be used. Another option is to
explicitly select the search view you want to use, by setting the search_view_id field of the action.
In addition to being able to pass default form values in the context of the action, OpenERP 6.0 now supports passing
initial values for search views too, via the context. The context keys need to match the search_default_XXX
format. XXX may refer to the name of a <field> or <filter> in the search view (as the name attribute is not
required on filters, this only works for filters that have an explicit name set). The value should be either the initial
value for search fields, or simply a boolean value for filters, to toggle them
<record id="action_view_task" model="ir.actions.act_window">

<field name="name">Tasks</field>
<field name="res_model">project.task</field>
<field name="view_type">form</field>
<field name="view_mode">tree,form,calendar,gantt,graph</field>
<field eval="False" name="filter"/>
<field name="view_id" ref="view_task_tree2"/>
<field name="context">{"search_default_current":1,"search_default_user_id":uid}</
˓→field>
<field name="search_view_id" ref="view_task_search_form"/>

</record>
Custom Filters
As of v6.0, all search views also features custom search filters, as show below. Users can define their own custom
filters using any of the fields available on the current model, combining them with AND/OR operators. It is also
possible to save any search context (the combination of all currently applied domain and context values) as a personal
filter, which can be recalled at any time. Filters can also be turned into Shortcuts directly available in the User’s
homepage.
In above screenshot we filter Partner where Salesman = Demo user and Country = Belgium, We can save this search
criteria as a Shortcut or save as Filter.
Filters are user specific and can be modified via the Manage Filters option in the filters drop-down.
Graph views
A graph is a new mode of view for all views of type form. If, for example, a sale order line must be visible as list or as
graph, define it like this in the action that open this sale order line. Do not set the view mode as “tree,form,graph” or
“form,graph” - it must be “graph,tree” to show the graph first or “tree,graph” to show the list first. (This view mode is
extra to your “form,tree” view and should have a separate menu item):
<field name="view_mode">tree,graph</field>
1.3. Modules 33
view_type:
tree = (tree with shortcuts at the left), form = (switchable view form/list)
view_mode:
tree,graph : sequences of the views when switching
Then, the user will be able to switch from one view to the other. Unlike forms and trees, OpenERP is not able to
automatically create a view on demand for the graph type. So, you must define a view for this graph:
<record model="ir.ui.view" id="view_order_line_graph">

<field name="name">sale.order.line.graph</field>
<field name="model">sale.order.line</field>
<field name="type">graph</field>
<field name="arch" type="xml">
<graph string="Sales Order Lines">
<field name="product_id" group="True"/>
<field name="price_unit" operator="*"/>
</graph>
</field>
</record>
The graph view

A view of type graph is just a list of fields for the graph.
Graph tag
The default type of the graph is a pie chart - to change it to a barchart change <graph string=”Sales Order Lines”>
to <graph string=”Sales Order Lines” type=”bar”> You also may change the orientation.
:Example :
<graph string="Sales Order Lines" orientation="horizontal" type="bar">
Field tag
The first field is the X axis. The second one is the Y axis and the optional third one is the Z axis for 3 dimensional
graphs. You can apply a few attributes to each field/axis:
• group: if set to true, the client will group all item of the same value for this field. For each other field, it will
apply an operator
• operator: the operator to apply is another field is grouped. By default it’s ‘+’. Allowed values are:
– +: addition
– *: multiply
– **: exponent
– min: minimum of the list
– max: maximum of the list
Defining real statistics on objects
The easiest method to compute real statistics on objects is:

1. Define a statistic object which is a postgresql view

2. Create a tree view and a graph view on this object
You can get en example in all modules of the form: report_.... Example: report_crm.
Controlling view actions
When defining a view, the following attributes can be added on the opening element of the view (i.e. <form>,
<tree>...)
create set to false to hide the link / button which allows to create a new record.
delete set to false to hide the link / button which allows to remove a record.
edit set to false to hide the link / button which allows to edit a record.
These attributes are available on form, tree, kanban and gantt views. They are normally automatically set from the
access rights of the users, but can be forced globally in the view definition. A possible use case for these attributes is
to define an inner tree view for a one2many relation inside a form view, in which the user cannot add or remove related
records, but only edit the existing ones (which are presumably created through another way, such as a wizard).
Calendar Views
Calendar view provides timeline/schedule view for the data.
View Specification
Here is an example view:
<calendar color="user_id" date_delay="planned_hours" date_start="date_start" string=

˓→"Tasks">
<field name="name"/>
<field name="project_id"/>
</calendar>
Here is the list of supported attributes for calendar tag:

string The title string for the view.
date_start A datetime field to specify the starting date for the calendar item. This attribute is
required.
date_stop A datetime field to specify the end date. Ignored if date_delay attribute is specified.
date_delay A numeric field to specify time in hours for a record. This attribute will get preference
over date_stop and date_stop will be ignored.
day_length An integer value to specify working day length. Default is 8 hours.
color A field, generally many2one, to colorize calendar/gantt items.
mode A string value to set default view/zoom mode. For calendar view, this can be one of following
(default is month):
• day
• week
• month
1.3. Modules 35
Screenshots
Month Calendar:
Week Calendar:
Gantt Views
Gantt view provides timeline view for the data. Generally, it can be used to display project tasks and resource alloca-
tion.
A Gantt chart is a graphical display of all the tasks that a project is composed of. Each bar on the chart is a graphical
representation of the length of time the task is planned to take.
A resource allocation summary bar is shown on top of all the grouped tasks, representing how effectively the resources
are allocated among the tasks.
Color coding of the summary bar is as follows:
• Gray shows that the resource is not allocated to any task at that time
• Blue shows that the resource is fully allocated at that time.
• Red shows that the resource is overallocated
View Specification
Here is an example view:
<gantt color="user_id" date_delay="planned_hours" date_start="date_start" string=

˓→"Tasks">
<level object="project.project" link="project_id" domain="[]">

</level>
</gantt>
The attributes accepted by the gantt tag are similar to calendar view tag. The level tag is used to group
the records by some many2one field. Currently, only one level is supported.
Here is the list of supported attributes for gantt tag:
string The title string for the view.
date_start A datetime field to specify the starting date for the gantt item. This attribute is re-
quired.
date_stop A datetime field to specify the end date. Ignored if date_delay attribute is specified.
date_delay A numeric field to specify time in hours for a record. This attribute will get preference
over date_stop and date_stop will be ignored.
day_length An integer value to specify working day length. Default is 8 hours.
color A field, generally many2one, to colorize calendar/gantt items.
mode A string value to set default view/zoom mode. For gantt view, this can be one of following
(default is month):
• day
• 3days

• week
• 3weeks
• month
• 3months
• year
• 3years
• 5years
The level tag supports following attributes:
object An openerp object having many2one relationship with view object.
link The field name in current object that links to the given object.
domain The domain to be used to filter the given object records.
Drag and Drop
The left side pane displays list of the tasks grouped by the given level field. You can reorder or change the group of
any records by dragging them.
The main content pane displays horizontal bars plotted on a timeline grid. A group of bars are summarized with a top
summary bar displaying resource allocation of all the underlying tasks.
You can change the task start time by dragging the tasks horizontally. While end time can be changed by dragging
right end of a bar.
Note: The time is calculated considering day_length so a bar will span more then one day if total time for a task
is greater then day_length value.
Screenshots
Design Elements
The files describing the views are of the form:

Example
<openerp>
<data>
[view definitions]
</data>
</openerp>
The view definitions contain mainly three types of tags:

• <record> tags with the attribute model=”ir.ui.view”, which contain the view definitions themselves
• <record> tags with the attribute model=”ir.actions.act_window”, which link actions to these views
• <menuitem> tags, which create entries in the menu, and link them with actions
1.3. Modules 37
New : You can specify groups for whom the menu is accessible using the groups attribute in the menuitem tag.
New : You can now add shortcut using the shortcut tag.
Example
<shortcut
name="Draft Purchase Order (Proposals)"
model="purchase.order"
logins="demo"
menu="m"/>
Note that you should add an id attribute on the menuitem which is referred by menu attribute.
<record model="ir.ui.view" id="v">

<field name="name">sale.order.form</field>
<field name="model">sale.order</field>
<field name="priority" eval="2"/>
<form string="Sale Order">
.........
</form>
</field>
</record>
Default value for the priority field : 16. When not specified the system will use the view with the lower priority.
View Types
Tree View
You can specify the columns to include in the list, along with some details of the list’s appearance. The search fields
aren’t specified here, they’re specified by the select attribute in the form view fields.
<record id="view_location_tree2" model="ir.ui.view">

<field name="name">stock.location.tree</field>
<field name="model">stock.location</field>
<field name="type">tree</field>
<field name="priority" eval="2"/>
<tree
colors="blue:usage=='view';darkred:usage=='internal'">
<field name="complete_name"/>
<field name="usage"/>
<field
name="stock_real"
invisible="'product_id' not in context"/>
<field
name="stock_virtual"
invisible="'product_id' not in context"/>
</tree>
</field>
</record>
That example is just a flat list, but you can also display a real tree structure by specifying a field_parent. The name is
a bit misleading, though; the field you specify must contain a list of all child entries.

<record id="view_location_tree" model="ir.ui.view">

<field name="name">stock.location.tree</field>
<field name="model">stock.location</field>
<field name="type">tree</field>
<field name="field_parent">child_ids</field>
<tree toolbar="1">
<field icon="icon" name="name"/>
</tree>
</field>
</record>
On the tree element, the following attributes are supported:

colors Conditions for applying different colors to items in the list. The default is black.
toolbar Set this to 1 if you want a tree structure to list the top level entries in a separate toolbar area. When you click
on an entry in the toolbar, all its descendants will be displayed in the main tree. The value is ignored for flat
lists.
Grouping Elements
Separator
Adds a separator line

Example
<separator string="Links" colspan="4"/>
The string attribute defines its label and the colspan attribute defines his horizontal size (in number of columns).
Notebook
<notebook>: With notebooks you can distribute the view fields on different tabs (each one defined by a page tag). You
can use the tabpos properties to set tab at: up, down, left, right.
Example
<notebook colspan="4">....</notebook>
Group
<group>: groups several columns and split the group in as many columns as desired.
• colspan: the number of columns to use
• rowspan: the number of rows to use
• expand: if we should expand the group or not
• col: the number of columns to provide (to its children)
• string: (optional) If set, a frame will be drawn around the group of fields, with a label containing the string.
Otherwise, the frame will be invisible.
1.3. Modules 39
Example
<group col="3" colspan="2">

<field name="invoiced" select="2"/>
<button colspan="1" name="make_invoice" states="confirmed" string="Make Invoice"
type="object"/>
</group>
Page
Defines a new notebook page for the view.

Example
<page string="Order Line"> ... </page>:
• string: defines the name of the page.
Data Elements
Field
attributes for the “field” tag

• select="1": mark this field as being one of the search criteria for this resource’s search view. A value
of 1 means that the field is included in the basic search, and a value of 2 means that it is in the advanced
search.
• colspan="4": the number of columns on which a field must extend.
• readonly="1": set the widget as read only
• required="1": the field is marked as required. If a field is marked as required, a user has to fill it the system
won’t save the resource if the field is not filled. This attribute supersede the required field value defined in the
object.
• nolabel="1": hides the label of the field (but the field is not hidden in the search view).
• invisible="True": hides both the label and the field.
• password="True": replace field values by asterisks, “*”.
• string="": change the field label. Note that this label is also used in the search view: see select attribute
above).
• domain: can restrict the domain.
– Example: domain=”[(‘partner_id’,’=’,partner_id)]”
• widget: can change the widget.
– Example: widget=”one2many_list”
* one2one_list
* one2many_list
* many2one_list
* many2many

* url
* email
* image
* float_time
* reference
• mode: sequences of the views when switching.
– Example: mode=”tree,graph”
• on_change: define a function that is called when the content of the field changes.
– Example: on_change=”onchange_partner(type,partner_id)”
– See ViewsSpecialProperties for details
• attrs: Permits to define attributes of a field depends on other fields of the same window. (It can be use on page, group, bu
– Format: “{‘attribute’:[(‘field_name’,’operator’,’value’),(‘field_name’,’operator’,’value’)],’attribute2’:[(‘field_name’,’ope
– where attribute will be readonly, invisible, required
– Default value: {}.
– Example: (in product.product)
<field digits="(14, 3)" name="volume" attrs="{'readonly':[('type','=','service

˓→')]}"/>
• eval: evaluate the attribute content as if it was Python code (see below for example)
• default_focus: set to 1 to put the focus (cursor position) on this field when the form is first opened. There
can only be one field within a view having this attribute set to 1 (new as of 5.2)
<field name="name" default_focus=”1”/>
Example
Here’s the source code of the view of a sale order object. This is the same object as the object shown on the screen
shots of the presentation.
Example
<openerp>
<data>
<record id="view_partner_form" model="ir.ui.view">
<field name="name">res.partner.form</field>
<field name="model">res.partner</field>
<field name="type">form</field>
<form string="Partners">
<group colspan="4" col="6">
<field name="name" select="1"/>
<field name="ref" select="1"/>
<field name="customer" select="1"/>
<field domain="[('domain', '=', 'partner')]" name="title"/>
<field name="lang" select="2"/>
<field name="supplier" select="2"/>
1.3. Modules 41
</group>
<notebook colspan="4">
<page string="General">
<field colspan="4" mode="form,tree" name="address"
nolabel="1" select="1">
<form string="Partner Contacts">
<field name="name" select="2"/>
<field domain="[('domain', '=', 'contact')]" name=
˓→ "title"/>
<field name="function"/>
<field name="type" select="2"/>
<field name="street" select="2"/>
<field name="street2"/>
<newline/>
<field name="zip" select="2"/>
<field name="city" select="2"/>
<newline/>
<field completion="1" name="country_id" select="2"/>
<field name="state_id" select="2"/>
<newline/>
<field name="phone"/>
<field name="fax"/>
<newline/>
<field name="mobile"/>
<field name="email" select="2" widget="email"/>
</form>
<tree string="Partner Contacts">
<field name="zip"/>
<field name="city"/>
<field name="country_id"/>
<field name="phone"/>
<field name="email"/>
</tree>
</field>
<separator colspan="4" string="Categories"/>
<field colspan="4" name="category_id" nolabel="1" select="2"/>
</page>
<page string="Sales & Purchases">
<separator string="General Information" colspan="4"/>
<field name="user_id" select="2"/>
<field name="active" select="2"/>
<field name="website" widget="url"/>
<field name="date" select="2"/>
<field name="parent_id"/>
<newline/>
</page>
<page string="History">
<field colspan="4" name="events" nolabel="1" widget="one2many_
˓→ list"/>
</page>
<page string="Notes">
<field colspan="4" name="comment" nolabel="1"/>
</page>
</notebook>
</form>
</field>
</record>

<menuitem
action="action_partner_form"
id="menu_partner_form"
parent="base.menu_base_partner"
sequence="2"/>
</data>
</openerp>
The eval attribute
The eval attribute evaluate its content as if it was Python code. This allows you to define values that are not strings.
Normally, content inside <field> tags are always evaluated as strings.
Example 1:
<field name="value">2.3</field>
This will evaluate to the string '2.3' and not the float 2.3
Example 2:
<field name="value">False</field>
This will evaluate to the string 'False' and not the boolean False. This is especially tricky because Python’s
conversion rules consider any non-empty string to be True, so the above code will end up storing the opposite of
what is desired.
If you want to evaluate the value to a float, a boolean or another type, except string, you need to use the eval attribute:
<field name="value" eval="2.3" />

<field name="value" eval="False" />
Button
Adds a button to the current view. Allows the user to perform various actions on the current record.
After a button has been clicked, the record should always be reloaded.
Buttons have the following attributes:
@type Defines the type of action performed when the button is activated:
workflow (default) The button will send a workflow signal1 on the current model using the @name of the
button as workflow signal name and providing the record id as parameter (in a list).
The workflow signal may return an action descriptor, which should be executed. Otherwise it will return
False.
object The button will execute the method of name @name on the current model, providing the record id as
parameter (in a list). This call may return an action descriptor to execute.
action The button will trigger the execution of an action (ir.actions.actions). The id of this action
is the @name of the button.
From there, follows the normal action-execution workflow.
1 via exec_workflow on the object rpc endpoint
1.3. Modules 43
@special Only has one possible value currently: cancel, which indicates that the popup should be closed without
performing any RPC call or action resolution.
Note: Only meaningful within a popup-type window (e.g. a wizard). Otherwise, is a noop.
Warning: @special and @type are incompatible.
@name The button’s identifier, used to indicate which method should be called, which signal sent or which action
executed.
@confirm A confirmation popup to display before executing the button’s task. If the confirmation is dismissed the
button’s task must not be executed.
@string The label which should be displayed on the button2 .
@icon Display an icon on the button, if absent the button is text-only3 .
@states, @attrs, @invisible Standard OpenERP meaning for those view attributes
@default_focus If set to a truthy value (1), automatically selects that button so it is used if RETURN is pressed
while on the form.
May be ignored by the client.
New in version 6.0.
Example
<button name="order_confirm" states="draft" string="Confirm Order" icon="gtk-execute"/

˓→>
<button name="_action_open_window" string="Open Margins" type="object" default_

˓→focus=”1”/>
Label
Adds a simple label using the string attribute as caption.

Example
<label string="Test"/>
New Line
Force a return to the line even if all the columns of the view are not filled in.
Example
<newline/>
2 in form view, in list view buttons have no label

3 behavior in list view is undefined, as list view buttons don’t have labels.

Inheritance in Views
When you create and inherit objects in some custom or specific modules, it is better to inherit (than to replace) from
an existing view to add/modify/delete some fields and preserve the others.
Example
<record model="ir.ui.view" id="view_partner_form">

<field name="name">res.partner.form.inherit</field>
<field name="inherit_id" ref="base.view_partner_form"/>
<notebook position="inside">
<page string="Relations">
<field name="relation_ids" colspan="4" nolabel="1"/>
</page>
</notebook>
</field>
</record>
This will add a page to the notebook of the res.partner.form view in the base module.
The inheritance engine will parse the existing view and search for the root nodes of
It will append or edit the content of this tag. If this tag has some attributes, it will look in the parent view for a node
with matching attributes (except position).
You can use these values in the position attribute:
• inside (default): your values will be appended inside the tag
• after: add the content after the tag
• before: add the content before the tag
• replace: replace the content of the tag.
Replacing Content
<record model="ir.ui.view" id="view_partner_form1">

<field name="name">res.partner.form.inherit1</field>
<page string="Extra Info" position="replace">
<field name="relation_ids" colspan="4" nolabel="1"/>
</page>
</field>
</record>
Will replace the content of the Extra Info tab of the notebook with the relation_ids field.
The parent and the inherited views are correctly updated with --update=all argument like any other views.
1.3. Modules 45
Deleting Content
To delete a field from a form, an empty element with position="replace" attribute is used. Example:

<field name="lang" position="replace"/>
</field>
</record>
Inserting Content
To add a field into a form before the specified tag use position="before" attribute.

<field name="lang" position="before">
<field name="relation_ids"/>
</field>
</field>
</record>
Will add relation_ids field before the lang field.

To add a field into a form after the specified tag use position="after" attribute.

<field name="lang" position="after">
<field name="relation_ids"/>
</field>
</field>
</record>
Will add relation_ids field after the lang field.
Multiple Changes
To make changes in more than one location, wrap the fields in a data element.

<data>

<field name="lang" position="replace"/>

<field name="website" position="after">
<field name="lang"/>
</field>
</data>
</field>
</record>
Will delete the lang field from its usual location, and display it after the website field.
XPath Element
Sometimes a view is too complicated to let you simply identify a target field by name. For example, the field might
appear in two places. When that happens, you can use an xpath element to describe where your changes should be
placed.

<data>
<xpath
expr="//field[@name='address']/form/field[@name='email']"
position="after">
<field name="age"/>
</xpath>
<xpath
expr="//field[@name='address']/tree/field[@name='email']"
position="after">
<field name="age"/>
</xpath>
</data>
</field>
</record>
Will add the age field after the email field in both the form and tree view of the address list.
Specify the views you want to use
There are some cases where you would like to specify a view other than the default:
• If there are several form or tree views for an object.
• If you want to change the form or tree view used by a relational field (one2many for example).
Using the priority field
This field is available in the view definition, and is 16 by default. By default, OpenERP will display a model using the
view with the highest priority (the smallest number). For example, imagine we have two views for a simple model.
The model client with two fields : firstname and lastname. We will define two views, one which shows the firstname
first, and the other one which shows the lastname first.
1.3. Modules 47
1 
6 <record model="ir.ui.view" id="client_form_view_1">
7 <field name="name">client.form.view1</field>
8 <field name="model">client</field>
9 <field name="type">form</fiel>
10 <field name="arch" type="xml">
11 <field name="firstname"/>
12 <field name="lastname"/>
13 </field>
14 </record>
15
16 
20 <record model="ir.ui.view" id="client_form_view_2">
21 <field name="name">client.form.view2</field>
22 <field name="model">client</field>
23 <field name="priority" eval="15"/>
24 <field name="type">form</fiel>
25 <field name="arch" type="xml">
26 <field name="lastname"/>
27 <field name="firstname"/>
28 </field>
29 </record>
Now, each time OpenERP will have to show a form view for our object client, it will have the choice between two
views. It will always use the second one, because it has a higher priority ! Unless you tell it to use the first one !
Specify per-action view
To illustrate this point, we will create 2 menus which show a form view for this client object :
1 
5 <record
6 model="ir.actions.act_window"
7 id="client_form_action">
8 <field name="name">client.form.action</field>
9 <field name="res_model">client</field>
10 <field name="view_type">form</field>
11 <field name="view_mode">form</field>
12 </record>
13
14 
17 <record
18 model="ir.actions.act_window"
19 id="client_form_action1">

20 <field name="name">client.form.action1</field>
21 <field name="res_model">client</field>
22 <field name="view_type">form</field>
23 <field name="view_mode">form</field>
24 <field name="view_id" ref="client_form_view_1"/>
25 </record>
26
27 <menuitem id="menu_id" name="Client main menu"/>

28 <menuitem
29 id="menu_id_1"
30 name="Here we don't specify the view"
31 action="client_form_action" parent="menu_id"/>
32 <menuitem
33 id="menu_id_1"
34 name="Here we specify the view"
35 action="client_form_action1" parent="menu_id"/>
As you can see on line 19, we can specify a view. That means that when we open the second menu, OpenERP will use
the form view client_form_view_1, regardless of its priority.
Note: Remember to use the module name (module.view_id) in the ref attribute if you are referring to a view defined
in another module.
Specify views for related fields
Using the context
The view_id method works very well for menus/actions, but how can you specify the view to use for a one2many field,
for example? When you have a one2many field, two views are used, a tree view (in blue), and a form view when you
click on the add button (in red).
When you add a one2many field in a form view, you do something like this :
<field name="order_line" colspan="4" nolabel="1"/>
If you want to specify the views to use, you can add a context attribute, and specify a view id for each type of view
supported, exactly like the action’s view_id attribute, except that the provided view id must always be fully-qualified
with the module name, even if it belongs to the same module:
<field name="order_line" colspan="4" nolabel="1"

context="{'form_view_ref': 'module.view_id',
'tree_view_ref': 'module.view_id'}"/>
Note: You have to put the module name in the view_id, because this is evaluated when the view is displayed, and
not when the XML file is parsed, so the module name information is not available. Failing to do so will result in the
default view being selected (see below).
If you don’t specify the views, OpenERP will choose one in this order :
1. It will use the <form> or <tree> view defined inside the field (see below)
2. Else, it will use the views with the highest priority for this object.
1.3. Modules 49
3. Finally, it will generate default empty views, with all fields.
Note: The context keys are named <view_type>_view_ref.
Note: By default, OpenERP will never use a view that is not defined for your object. If you have two models, with
the same fields, but a different model name, OpenERP will never use the view of one for the other, even if one model
inherit an other.
You can force this by manually specifying the view, either in the action or in the context.
Using subviews
In the case of relational fields, you can create a view directly inside a field :
<record model="ir.ui.view" id="some_view">
<field name="name">some.view</field>
<field name="model">some.model.with.one2many</field>
<field name="..."/>


<field name="order_line" colspan="4" nolabel="1">
<form>
<field name="qty"/>
...
</form>
<tree>
<field name="qty"/>
...
</tree>
</field>
</field>
If you or another developer want to inherit from this view in another module, you need to inherit from the parent view
and then modify the child fields. With child views, you’ll often need to use an XPath Element to describe exactly
where to place your new fields.
<record model="ir.ui.view" id="some_inherited_view">
<field name="name">some.inherited.view</field>
<field name="model">some.model.with.one2many</field>
<field name="inherit_id" ref="core_module.some_view"/>
<data>
<xpath
expr="//field[@name='order_line']/form/field[@name='qty']"
position="after">
<field name="size"/>
</xpath>
<xpath
expr="//field[@name='order_line']/tree/field[@name='qty']"
position="after">
<field name="size"/>

</xpath>
</data>
</field>
One down side of defining a subview like this is that it can’t be inherited on its own, it can only be inherited with the
parent view. Your views will be more flexible if you define the child views separately and then specify which child
view to use as part of the one2many field.
1.3.4 Menus and Actions
Menus
Menus are records in the ir.ui.menu table. In order to create a new menu entry, you can directly create a record
using the record tag.
<record id="menu_xml_id" model="ir.ui.menu">

<field name="name">My Menu</field>
<field name="action" ref="action_xml_id"/>
<field name="sequence" eval="<integer>"/>
<field name="parent_id" ref="parent_menu_xml_id"/>
</record>
There is a shortcut by using the menuitem tag that you should use preferentially. It offers a flexible way to easily
define the menu entry along with icons and other fields.
<menuitem id="menu_xml_id"
name="My Menu"
action="action_xml_id"
icon="NAME_FROM_LIST"
groups="groupname"
sequence="<integer>"
parent="parent_menu_xml_id"
/>
Where
• id specifies the xml identifier of the menu item in the menu items table. This identifier must be unique.
Mandatory field.
• name defines the menu name that will be displayed in the client. Mandatory field.
• action specifies the identifier of the attached action defined in the action table (ir.actions.
act_window). This field is not mandatory : you can define menu elements without associating actions to
them. This is useful when defining custom icons for menu elements that will act as folders. This is how custom
icons for “Projects” or “Human Resources” in OpenERP are defined).
• groups specifies which group of user can see the menu item. (example : groups=”admin”). See section ”
Management of Access Rights” for more information. Multiple groups should be separated by a ‘,’ (example:
groups=”admin,user”)
• sequence is an integer that is used to sort the menu item in the menu. The higher the sequence number, the
downer the menu item. This argument is not mandatory: if sequence is not specified, the menu item gets a
default sequence number of 10. Menu items with the same sequence numbers are sorted by order of creation
(_order = "*sequence,id*").
The main current limitation of using menuitem is that the menu action must be an act_window action. This kind
of actions is the most used action in OpenERP. However for some menus you will use other actions. For example, the
1.3. Modules 51
Feeds page that comes with the mail module is a client action. For this kind of menu entry, you can combine both
declaration, as defined in the mail module :


<menuitem id="mail_feeds_main" name="Feeds" sequence="0"
web_icon="static/src/img/feeds.png"
web_icon_hover="static/src/img/feeds-hover.png" />
<record id="mail_feeds_main" model="ir.ui.menu">
<field name="action" ref="action_mail_all_feeds"/>
</record>
Actions
The actions define the behavior of the system in response to the actions of the users ; login of a new user, double-click
on an invoice, click on the action button, ...
There are different types of simple actions:
• Window: Opening of a new window
• Report: The printing of a report o Custom Report: The personalized reports o RML Report: The XSL:RML
reports
• Execute: The execution of a method on the server side
• Group: Gather some actions in one group
The actions are used for the following events:
• User connection,
• The user clicks on a menu,
• The user clicks on the icon ‘print’ or ‘action’.
Opening of the menu
When the user open the option of the menu “Operations > Partners > Partners Contact”, the next steps are done to give
the user information on the action to undertake.
1. Search the action in the IR.
2. Execution of the action
(a) If the action is the type Opening the Window; it indicates to the user that a new window must be
opened for a selected object and it gives you the view (form or list) and the filed to use (only the
pro-forma invoice).
(b) The user asks the object and receives information necessary to trace a form; the fields description and
the XML view.
User connection
When a new user is connected to the server, the client must search the action to use for the first screen of this user.
Generally, this action is: open the menu in the ‘Operations’ section.
The steps are:
1. Reading of a user file to obtain ACTION_ID

2. Reading of the action and execution of this one
The fields
Action Name The action name

Action Type Always ‘ir.actions.act_window’
View Ref The view used for showing the object
Model The model of the object to post
Type of View The type of view (Tree/Form)
Domain Value The domain that decreases the visible data with this view
The view
The view describes how the edition form or the data tree/list appear on screen. The views can be of ‘Form’ or ‘Tree’
type, according to whether they represent a form for the edition or a list/tree for global data viewing.
A form can be called by an action opening in ‘Tree’ mode. The form view is generally opened from the list mode (like
if the user pushes on ‘switch view’).
The domain
This parameter allows you to regulate which resources are visible in a selected view.(restriction)
For example, in the invoice case, you can define an action that opens a view that shows only invoices not paid.
The domains are written in python; list of tuples. The tuples have three elements;
• the field on which the test must be done
• the operator used for the test (<, >, =, like)
• the tested value
For example, if you want to obtain only ‘Draft’ invoice, use the following domain; [(‘state’,’=’,’draft’)]
In the case of a simple view, the domain define the resources which are the roots of the tree. The other resources, even
if they are not from a part of the domain will be posted if the user develop the branches of the tree.
Window Action
Actions are explained in more detail in section “Administration Modules - Actions”. Here’s the template of an action
XML record :
<record model="ir.actions.act_window" id="action_id_1">

<field name="name">action.name</field>
<field name="view_id" ref="view_id_1"/>
<field name="domain">["list of 3-tuples (max 250 characters)"]</field>
<field name="context">{"context dictionary (max 250 characters)"}</field>
<field name="res_model">Open.object</field>
<field name="view_type">form|tree</field>
<field name="view_mode">form,tree|tree,form|form|tree</field>
<field name="usage">menu</field>
1.3. Modules 53
<field name="target">new</field>
</record>
Where
• id is the identifier of the action in the table “ir.actions.act_window”. It must be unique.
• name is the name of the action (mandatory).
• view_id is the name of the view to display when the action is activated. If this field is not defined, the view of
a kind (list or form) associated to the object res_model with the highest priority field is used (if two views have
the same priority, the first defined view of a kind is used).
• domain is a list of constraints used to refine the results of a selection, and hence to get less records displayed in
the view. Constraints of the list are linked together with an AND clause : a record of the table will be displayed
in the view only if all the constraints are satisfied.
• context is the context dictionary which will be visible in the view that will be opened when the action is
activated. Context dictionaries are declared with the same syntax as Python dictionaries in the XML file. For
more information about context dictionaries, see section ” The context Dictionary”.
• res_model is the name of the object on which the action operates.
• view_type is set to form when the action must open a new form view, and is set to tree when the action must
open a new tree view.
• view_mode is only considered if view_type is form, and ignored otherwise. The four possibilities are :
– form,tree : the view is first displayed as a form, the list view can be displayed by clicking the “alter-
nate view button” ;
– tree,form : the view is first displayed as a list, the form view can be displayed by clicking the “alter-
nate view button” ;
– form : the view is displayed as a form and there is no way to switch to list view ;
– tree : the view is displayed as a list and there is no way to switch to form view.
(version 5 introduced graph and calendar views)
• usage is used [+ *TODO* +]
• target the view will open in new window like wizard.
• context will be passed to the action itself and added to its global context
<record model="ir.actions.act_window" id="a">

<field name="name">account.account.tree1</field>
<field name="res_model">account.account</field>
<field name="view_type">tree</field>
<field name="view_mode">form,tree</field>
<field name="view_id" ref="v"/>
<field name="domain">[('code','=','0')]</field>
<field name="context">{'project_id': active_id}</field>
</record>
They indicate at the user that he has to open a new window in a new ‘tab’.
Administration > Custom > Low Level > Base > Action > Window Actions

Examples of actions
This action is declared in server/bin/addons/project/project_view.xml.
<record model="ir.actions.act_window" id="open_view_my_project">

<field name="name">project.project</field>
<field name="res_model">project.project</field>
<field name="view_type">tree</field>
<field name="domain">[('parent_id','=',False), ('manager', '=', uid)]</field>
<field name="view_id" ref="view_my_project" />
</record>
This action is declared in server/bin/addons/stock/stock_view.xml.
<record model="ir.actions.act_window" id="action_picking_form">

<field name="name">stock.picking</field>
<field name="res_model">stock.picking</field>
<field name="type">ir.actions.act_window</field>
<field name="view_id" ref="view_picking_form"/>
<field name="context">{'contact_display': 'partner'}</field>
</record>
Url Action
Report Action
Report declaration
Reports in OpenERP are explained in chapter “Reports Reporting”. Here’s an example of a XML file that declares a
RML report :
<openerp>
<data>
<report id="sale_category_print"
string="Sales Orders By Categories"
model="sale.order"
name="sale_category.print"
rml="sale_category/report/sale_category_report.rml"
menu="True"
auto="False"/>
</data>
</openerp>
A report is declared using a report tag inside a “data” block. The different arguments of a report tag are :
• id : an identifier which must be unique.
• string : the text of the menu that calls the report (if any, see below).
• model : the OpenERP object on which the report will be rendered.
• rml : the .RML report model. Important Note : Path is relative to addons/ directory.
• menu : whether the report will be able to be called directly via the client or not. Setting menu to False is useful
in case of reports called by wizards.
1.3. Modules 55
• auto : determines if the .RML file must be parsed using the default parser or not. Using a custom parser allows
you to define additional functions to your report.
Action creation
Linking events to action
The available type of events are:

• client_print_multi (print from a list or form)
• client_action_multi (action from a list or form)
• tree_but_open (double click on the item of a tree, like the menu)
• tree_but_action (action on the items of a tree)
To map an events to an action:
<record model="ir.values" id="ir_open_journal_period">

<field name="key2">tree_but_open</field>
<field name="model">account.journal.period</field>
<field name="name">Open Journal</field>
<field name="value" eval="'ir.actions.wizard,%d'%action_move_journal_line_form_
˓→select"/>
<field name="object" eval="True"/>

</record>
If you double click on a journal/period (object: account.journal.period), this will open the selected wizard.
(id=”action_move_journal_line_form_select”).
You can use a res_id field to allow this action only if the user click on a specific object.
<record model="ir.values" id="ir_open_journal_period">

<field name="key2">tree_but_open</field>
<field name="model">account.journal.period</field>
<field name="name">Open Journal</field>
<field name="value" eval="'ir.actions.wizard,%d'%action_move_journal_line_form_
˓→select"/>
<field name="res_id" eval="3"/>

<field name="object" eval="True"/>
</record>
The action will be triggered if the user clicks on the account.journal.period n°3.
When you declare wizard, report or menus, the ir.values creation is automatically made with these tags:
• <menuitem... />
• <report... />
So you usually do not need to add the mapping by yourself.
1.3.5 Example of module creation
Getting the skeleton directory
Create a travel directory, that will contain our addon. Create __init__.py file and __openerp__.py files.

Edit the __openerp__.py module manifest file:

{
"name" : "Travel agency module",
"version" : "1.1",
"author" : "Tiny",
"category" : "Generic Modules/Others",
"website" : "http://www.openerp.com",
"description": "A module to manage hotel bookings and a few other useful features.
˓→",
"depends" : ["base"],
"init_xml" : [],
"update_xml" : ["travel_view.xml"],
"active": True,
"installable": True
}
Changing the main module file
Now you need to update the travel.py script to suit the needs of your module. We suggest you follow the Flash tutorial
for this or download the travel agency module from the 20 minutes tutorial page.
The documentation below is overlapping the two next step in this wiki tutorial,
so just consider them as a help and head towards the next two pages first...
The travel.py file should initially look like this:

from osv import osv, fields
class travel_hostel(osv.osv):
_name = 'travel.hostel'
_inherit = 'res.partner'
_columns = {
'rooms_id': fields.one2many('travel.room', 'hostel_id', 'Rooms'),
'quality': fields.char('Quality', size=16),
}
_defaults = {
}
travel_hostel()
Ideally, you would copy that bunch of code several times to create all the entities you need (travel_airport, travel_room,
travel_flight). This is what will hold the database structure of your objects, but you don’t really need to worry too much
about the database side. Just filling this file will create the system structure for you when you install the module.
Customizing the view
You can now move on to editing the views. To do this, edit the custom_view.xml file. It should first look like this:
<openerp>
<data>
<record model="res.groups" id="group_compta_user">
<field name="name">grcompta</field>
</record>
<record model="res.groups" id="group_compta_admin">
<field name="name">grcomptaadmin</field>
</record>
1.3. Modules 57
<menuitem name="Administration" groups="admin,grcomptaadmin"

icon="terp-stock" id="menu_admin_compta"/>
</data>
</openerp>
This is, as you can see, an example taken from an accounting system (French people call accounting “comptabilité”,
which explains the compta bit).
Defining a view is defining the interfaces the user will get when accessing your module. Just defining a bunch of fields
here should already get you started on a complete interface. However, due to the complexity of doing it right, we
recommend, once again, that download the travel agency module example from this link http://apps.openerp.com/
Next you should be able to create different views using other files to separate them from your basic/admin view.
1.3.6 Module versioning
OpenERP has been developed with modularity in mind: OpenERP should be flexible enough so it can be adopted by
any enterprise, of any size and in any market. By using modules one can adapt OpenERP in many different ways:
from completely different business to smaller, company-specific changes.
As modules (and the core framework itself) evolve, it is necessary to identify modules by their version so a sensible
set of modules can be chosen for a particular deployment.
There are two trends re-inforcing each others. Firstly OpenERP s.a. will work on a smaller number of official modules
and let the community handles more and more development. Secondly all those modules will receive greater exposure
on OpenERP Apps where each module will be owned by a single author.
The solution advocated by OpenERP is straightforward and aims to avoid the dependency hell. In particular we don’t
want to deal with versioned dependencies (i.e. a module depends on a specific version of another module).
For each stable release (e.g. OpenERP 6.1, or OpenERP 7.0) or, said in other words, for each major version, there is
only one (major) version of each module. The minor version is bumped for bug fixes but is otherwise not important
here.
Making variations on some business needs must be done by creating new modules, possibly depending on previously
written modules. If depending on a module proves too difficult, you can write a new module (not a new _version_).
But generally Python is flexible enough that depending on the existing module should work.
For the next major version, refactoring modules can be done and similar functionalities can be brought together in a
better module.
Example
Whenever a new module is developed or must evolve, the above versioning policy should be respected.
A particular concern one can face when deploying OpenERP to multiple customers is now detailed as an example to
provide a few guidelines. The hypotethical situation is as follow. A partner needs to create a new module, called M, for
a customer. Shortly after (but still within a typical OpenERP release cycle, so there is no chance to bump the version
number except for bug fixes), M must be adapted for another customer.
The correct way to handle it is to leave M as it is and create a new module, say called X, that depends on M for the
second customer. Both modules have the same version (i.e. 6.1 or 7.0, targeting the corresponding OpenERP version).
If leaving M as it is is not possible (which should be very rare as Python is incredibly flexible), the X module for the
new customer can depend on a new module N, derived from M. At this point, N is a new, differently named module. It
is not a M module with a increased version number. Your goal should be to make N as close as possible to M, so that at
the next version of OpenERP, the first customer can switch to N instead of M (or include the changes in a new version

of M). At that point you are in the ideal situation: you have a module N for one customer, and a module X depending
on N to account for the differences between those two customers.
1.4 Security in OpenERP: users, groups
Users and user roles are critical points concerning internal security in OpenERP. OpenERP provides several security
mechanisms concerning user roles, all implemented in the OpenERP Server. They are implemented in the lowest
server level, which is the ORM engine. OpenERP distinguishes three different concepts:
• user: a person identified by its login and password. Note that all employees of a company are not necessarily
OpenERP users; an user is somebody who accesses the application.
• group: a group of users that has some access rights. A group gives its access rights to the users that belong to
the group. Ex: Sales Manager, Accountant, etc.
• security rule: a rule that defines the access rights a given group grants to its users. Security rules are attached to
a given resource, for example the Invoice model.
Security rules are attached to groups. Users are assigned to several groups. This gives users the rights that are attached
to their groups. Therefore controlling user roles is done by managing user groups and adding or modifying security
rules attached to those groups.
1.4.1 Users
Users represent physical persons using OpenERP. They are identified with a login and a password,they use OpenERP,
they can edit their own preferences, ... By default, a user has no access right. The more we assign groups to the user,
the more he or she gets rights to perform some actions. A user may belong to several groups.
1.4.2 User groups
The groups determine the access rights to the different resources. A user may belong to several groups. If he belongs
to several groups, we always use the group with the highest rights for a selected resource. A group can inherit all the
rights from another group
Figure 3 shows how group membership is displayed in the web client. The user belongs to Sales / Manager, Accounting
/ Manager, Administration / Access Rights, Administration / Configuration and Human Resources / Employee groups.
Those groups define the user access rights.
Figure 3: Example of group membership for a given user
1.4.3 Rights
Security rules are attached to groups. You can assign several security rules at the group level, each rule being of one
of the following types :
• access rights are global rights on an object,
• record rules are records access filters,
• fields access right,
• workflow transition rules are operations rights.
1.4. Security in OpenERP: users, groups 59

You can also define rules that are global, i.e. they are applied to all users, indiscriminately of the groups they belong
to. For example, the multi-company rules are global; a user can only see invoices of the companies he or she belongs
to.
Concerning configuration, it is difficult to have default generic configurations that suit all applications. Therefore, like
SAP, OpenERP is by default pre-configured with best-practices.
1.4.4 Access rights
Access rights are rules that define the access a user can have on a particular object . Those global rights are defined per
document type or model. Rights follow the CRUD model: create, read (search), update (write), delete. For example,
you can define rules on invoice creation. By default, adding a right to an object gives the right to all records of that
specific object.
Figure 4 shows some of the access rights of the Accounting / Accountant group. The user has some read access rights
on some objects.
Figure 4: Access rights for some objects.
Record rules
When accessing an object, records are filtered based on record rules. Record rules or access filters are therefore filters
that limits records of an object a group can access. A record rule is a condition that each record must satisfy to be
created, read, updated (written) or deleted. Records that do not meet the constraints are filtered.
For example, you can create a rule to limit a group in such a way that users of that group will see business opportunities
in which he or she is flagged as the salesman. The rule can be salesman = connected_user. With that rule, only records
respecting the rule will be displayed.
Field access rights
New in version 7.0.

OpenERP now supports real access control at the field level, not just on the view side. Previously it was already
possible to set a groups attribute on a <field> element (or in fact most view elements), but with cosmetics effects
only: the element was made invisible on the client side, while still perfectly available for read/write access at the RPC
level.
As of OpenERP 7.0 the existing behavior is preserved on the view level, but a new groups attribute is available on
all model fields, introducing a model-level access control on each field. The syntax is the same as for the view-level
attribute:
_columns = {
'secret_key': fields.char('Secret Key', groups="base.group_erp_manager,base.group_
˓→system")
There is a major difference with the view-level groups attribute: restricting the access at the model level really means
that the field will be completely unavailable for users who do not belong to the authorized groups:
• Restricted fields will be completely removed from all related views, not just hidden. This is important to keep
in mind because it means the field value will not be available at all on the client side, and thus unavailable e.g.
for on_change calls.

• Restricted fields will not be returned as part of a call to fields_get() or fields_view_get() This is
in order to avoid them appearing in the list of fields available for advanced search filters, for example. This does
not prevent getting the list of a model’s fields by querying ir.model.fields directly, which is fine.
• Any attempt to read or write directly the value of the restricted fields will result in an AccessError exception.
• As a consequence of the previous item, restricted fields will not be available for use within search filters (do-
mains) or anything that would require read or write access.
• It is quite possible to set groups attributes for the same field both at the model and view level, even with
different values. Both will carry their effect, with the model-level restriction taking precedence and removing
the field completely in case of restriction.
Note: The tests related to this feature are in openerp/tests/test_acl.py.
Workflow transition rules
Workflow transition rules are rules that restrict some operations to certain groups. Those rules handle rights to go from
one step to another one in the workflow. For example, you can limit the right to validate an invoice, i.e. going from a
draft action to a validated action.
1.4.5 Menu accesses
In OpenERP, granting access to menus can be done using user groups. A menu that is not granted to any group is
accessible to every user. It is possible in the administration panel to define the groups that can access a given menu.
However, one should note that using groups to hide or give access to menus is more within the filed of ergonomics or
usability than within the field of security. It is a best practice putting rules on documents instead of putting groups on
menu. For example, hiding invoices can be done by modifying the record rule on the invoice object, and it is more
efficient and safer than hiding menus related to invoices.
1.4.6 Views customization
Customizing views based on groups is possible in OpenERP. You can put rules to display some fields based on group
rules. However, as with menu accesses customization, this option should not be considered for security concerns. This
way of customizing views belongs more to usability.
1.4.7 Administration
When installing your particular instance of OpenERP, a specific first user is installed by default. This first user is the
Super User or administrator. The administrator is by default added access rights to every existing groups, as well as
to every groups created during a new module installation. He also has access to a specific administration interface
accessible via the administration menu, allowing the administration of OpenERP.
The administrator has rights to manage groups; he can add, create, modify or remove groups. He may also modify links
between users and groups, such as adding or removing users. He also manages access rights. With those privileges,
the administrator can therefore precisely define security accesses of every users of OpenERP.
There are user groups that are between normal groups and the super user. Those groups are Administration / Con-
figuration and Administration / Access Rights. It gives to the users of those groups the necessary rights to configure
access rights.
1.4. Security in OpenERP: users, groups 61

1.5 Test framework
In addition to the YAML-based tests, OpenERP uses the unittest2 testing framework to test both the core openerp
package and its addons. For the core and each addons, tests are divided between three (overlapping) sets:
1. A test suite that comprises all the tests that can be run right after the addons is installed (or, for the core, right
after a database is created). That suite is called fast_suite and must contain only tests that can be run
frequently. Actually most of the tests should be considered fast enough to be included in that fast_suite
list and only tests that take a long time to run (e.g. more than a minute) should not be listed. Those long tests
should come up pretty rarely.
2. A test suite called checks provides sanity checks. These tests are invariants that must be full-filled at any time.
They are expected to always pass: obviously they must pass right after the module is installed (i.e. just like the
fast_suite tests), but they must also pass after any other module is installed, after a migration, or even after
the database was put in production for a few months.
3. The third suite is made of all the tests: those provided by the two above suites, but also tests that are not
explicitely listed in fast_suite or checks. They are not explicitely listed anywhere and are discovered
automatically.
As the sanity checks provide stronger guarantees about the code and database structure, new tests must be added to
the checks suite whenever it is possible. Said with other words: one should try to avoid writing tests that assume a
freshly installed/unaltered module or database.
It is possible to have tests that are not listed in fast_suite or checks. This is useful if a test takes a lot of time.
By default, when using the testing infrastructure, tests should run fast enough so that people can use them frequently.
One can also use that possiblity for tests that require some complex setup before they can be successfuly run.
As a rule of thumb when writing a new test, try to add it to the checks suite. If it really needs that the module it
belongs to is freshly installed, add it to fast_suite. Finally, if it can not be run in an acceptable time frame, don’t
add it to any explicit list.
1.5.1 Writing tests
The tests must be developed under <addons-name>.tests (or openerp.tests for the core). For instance,
with respect to the tests, a module foo should be organized as follow:
foo/
__init__.py # does not import .tests
tests/
__init__.py # import some of the tests sub-modules, and
# list them in fast_suite or checks
test_bar.py # contains unittest2 classes
test_baz.py # idem
... and so on ...
The two explicit lists of tests are thus the variables foo.tests.fast_suite and foo.tests.checks. As an
example, you can take a look at the openerp.tests module (which follows exactly the same conventions even if
it is not an addons).
Note that the fast_suite and checks variables are really lists of module objects. They could be directly unittest2
suite objects if necessary in the future.

1.5.2 Running the tests
To run the tests (see above to learn how tests are organized), the simplest way is to use the oe command (provided by
the openerp-command project).
> oe run-tests # will run all the fast_suite tests

> oe run-tests -m openerp # will run all the fast_suite tests defined in òpenerp.
˓→tests`
> oe run-tests -m sale # will run all the fast_suite tests defined in òpenerp.addons.
˓→sale.tests`
> oe run-tests -m foo.test_bar # will run the tests defined in òpenerp.addons.foo.

˓→tests.test_bar`
In addition to the above possibilities, when invoked with a non-existing module (or module.sub-module) name, oe will
reply with a list of available test sub-modules.
Depending on the unittest2 class that is used to write the tests (see openerp.tests.common for some helper
classes that you can re-use), a database may be created before the test is run, and the module providing the test will be
installed on that database.
Because creating a database, installing modules, and then dropping it is expensive, it is possible to interleave the run
of the fast_suite tests with the initialization of a new database: the dabase is created, and after each requested
module is installed, its fast_suite tests are run. The database is thus created and dropped (and the modules installed)
only once.
1.5.3 TestCase subclasses
Note: The setUp and tearDown methods are not part of the tests. Uncaught exceptions in those methods are errors,
not test failures. In particular, a failing setUp will not be followed by a tearDown causing any allocated resource in
the setUp to not be released by the tearDown.
In the openerp.tests.common.TransactionCase and openerp.tests.common.
SingleTransactionCase, this means the test suite can hang because of unclosed cursors.
1.6 Miscellanous
1.6.1 On Change Methods
Definition of on change methods in a view looks like this:
<field name="name" on_change="name_change(name, address, city)"/>
And here is the corresponding method in the model:
def name_change(self, cr, uid, ids, name, address, city, context=None):

...
return {
'value': {
'address': ...
'city': ...
}
}
1.6. Miscellanous 63
On change methods can be confusing when people use them, here are a list of clarifications to avoid any misconception:
• On change methods can be executed during the creation of a row, long before it is effectively saved into the
database.
• Fields are not validated before going through a on change methods. As an example, a field marqued as required
can be False.
• On change methods can read data in the database but should never attempt to write anything, this is always a
strong conception problem.
• The format of the values passed to an on change method is exactly the same than the one passed to the write()
method. So the on change method must be able to handle any format used for all the fields it process. The
following list describe some fields that can have an unusual format.
– float: Due to the way JSON represents numbers and the way the JSON library of Python handles it, a
float field will not always be represented as a python float type. When the number can be represented as
an integer it will appear as a python integer type. This can be a problem when using some mathematical
operations (example: price / 2), so it is a good practice to always cast any number to float when you want
to handle floats in on change methods.
– one2many and many2many: There are plenty of misconception about x2many fields in on change methods.
The reality is, in fact, quite complex. x2many are defined by a list of operations, each operation was given
a number (0 -> create, 1 -> write, ect...) and has its own semantic. To be able to use one2many and
many2many in on change methods, you are strongly encourage to use the resolve_2many_commands()
method. Here is a sample usage:
values = self.resolve_2many_commands(cr, uid, 'my_o2m', my_o2m_values, ['price

˓→', 'tax'], context)
This code will convert the complex list of operations that makes the o2m value into a simple list of dictio-
naries containing the fields ‘price’ and ‘tax’, which is way simpler to handle in most on change methods.
Please note that you can also return a list of dictionaries as the new value of a one2many, it will replace
the actual rows contained in that one2many (but it will also remove the previous ones).
1.6.2 Font style in list views
New in version 7.0.

This revision adds font styles in list views. Before this revision it was possible to define some colors in list view. This
revision allows to define the a font style, based on an evaluated Python expression. The definition syntax is the same
than the colors feature. Supported styles are bold, italic and underline.
Rng modification
This revision adds the fonts optional attribute in view.rng.
Addon implementation example
In your foo module, you want to specify that when any record is in pending state then it should be displayed in
bold in the list view. Edit your foo_view.xml file that define the views, and add the fonts attribute to the tree tag.
<tree string="Foo List View" fonts="bold:state=='pending'">

[...]
</tree>

1.6.3 Need action mechanism
New in version 7.0.
ir.needaction_mixin class
New in version openobject-server.4124.

This revision adds a mixin class for objects using the need action feature.
Need action feature can be used by objects willing to be able to signal that an action is required on a particular record. If
in the business logic an action must be performed by somebody, for instance validation by a manager, this mechanism
allows to set a list of users asked to perform an action.
This class wraps a class (ir.ir_needaction_users_rel) that behaves like a many2many field. However, no field is added
to the model inheriting from ir.needaction_mixin. The mixin class manages the low-level considerations of updating
relationships. Every change made on the record calls a method that updates the relationships.
Objects using the need_action feature should override the get_needaction_user_ids method. This methods
returns a dictionary whose keys are record ids, and values a list of user ids, like in a many2many relationship. Therefore
by defining only one method, you can specify if an action is required by defining the users that have to do it, in every
possible situation.
This class also offers several global services,:
• needaction_get_record_ids: for the current model and uid, get all record ids that ask this user
to perform an action. This mechanism is used for instance to display the number of pending actions in
menus, such as Leads (12)
• needaction_get_action_count: as needaction_get_record_ids but returns only the
number of action, not the ids (performs a search with count=True)
• needaction_get_user_record_references: for a given uid, get all the records that ask this
user to perform an action. Records are given as references, a list of tuples (model_name, record_id).
This revision of the needaction_mixin mechanism slighty modifies the class behavior. The
ir_needaction_mixin class now adds a function field on models inheriting from the class. This field al-
lows to state whether a given record has a needaction for the current user. This is usefull if you want to customize
views according to the needaction feature. For example, you may want to set records in bold in a list view if the
current user has an action to perform on the record. This makes the class not a pure abstract class, but allows to easily
use the action information. The field definition is:
def get_needaction_pending(self, cr, uid, ids, name, arg, context=None):
res = {}
needaction_user_ids = self.get_needaction_user_ids(cr, uid, ids, context=context)
for id in ids:
res[id] = uid in needaction_user_ids[id]
return res
_columns = {
'needaction_pending': fields.function(get_needaction_pending, type='boolean',
string='Need action pending',
help='If True, this field states that users have to perform an
˓→action. \
This field comes from the needaction mechanism. Please

˓→refer \
to the ir.needaction_mixin class.'),

}
ir.needaction_users_rel class

This class essentially wraps a database table that behaves like a many2many. It holds data related to the needaction
mechanism inside OpenERP. A row in this model is characterized by:
• res_model: model of the record requiring an action
• res_id: ID of the record requiring an action
• user_id: foreign key to the res.users table, to the user that has to perform the action
This model can be seen as a many2many, linking (res_model, res_id) to users (those whose attention is required on
the record)
Menu modification
Changed in version openobject-server.4137.

This revision adds three functional fields to ir.ui.menu model :
• uses_needaction: boolean field. If the menu entry action is an act_window action, and if this action
is related to a model that uses the need_action mechanism, this field is set to true. Otherwise, it is false.
• needaction_uid_ctr: integer field. If the target model uses the need action mechanism, this field
gives the number of actions the current user has to perform.
• REMOVED needaction_record_ids: many2many field. If the target model uses the need action
mechanism, this field holds the ids of the record requesting the user to perform an action. This field has
been removed on version XXXX.
Those fields are functional, because they depend on the user and must therefore be computed at every refresh, each
time menus are displayed. The use of the need action mechanism is done by taking into account the action domain in
order to display accurate results. When computing the value of the functional fields, the ids of records asking the user
to perform an action is concatenated to the action domain. A counting search is then performed on the model, giving
back the number of action the users has to perform, limited to the domain of the action.
Addon implementation example
In your foo module, you want to specify that when it is in state confirmed, it has to be validated by a manager,
given by the field manager_id. After making foo inheriting from ir.needaction_mixin, you override the
get_needaction_user_ids method:
[...]
_inherit = [ìr.needaction_mixin]
[...]
def get_needaction_user_ids(self, cr, uid, ids, context=None):
result = dict.fromkeys(ids)
for foo_obj in self.browse(cr, uid, ids, context=context):
# set the list void by default
result[foo_obj.id] = []
# if foo_obj is confirmed: manager is required to perform an action
if foo_obj.state == 'confirmed':
result[foo_obj.id] = [foo_obj.manager_id]
return result

1.6.4 User avatar
New in version 7.0.

This revision adds an avatar for users. This replaces the use of gravatar to emulate avatars, used in views like the tasks
kanban view. Two fields have been added to the res.users model:
• avatar_big, a binary field holding the image. It is base-64 encoded, and PIL-supported. Images stored are
resized to 540x450 px, to limitate the binary field size.
• avatar, a function binary field holding an automatically resized version of the avatar_big field. It is also base-
64 encoded, and PIL-supported. Dimensions of the resized avatar are 180x150. This field is used as an inteface
to get and set the user avatar.
When changing the avatar through the avatar function field, the new image is automatically resized to 540x450, and
stored in the avatar_big field. This triggers the function field, that will compute a 180x150 resized version of the
image.
An avatar field has been added to the users form view, as well as in Preferences. When creating a new user, a default
avatar is chosen among 6 possible default images.
1.6.5 Bulk Import
OpenERP has included a bulk import facility for CSV-ish files for a long time. With 7.0, both the interface and internal
implementation have been redone, resulting in load().
Note: the previous bulk-loading method, import_data(), remains for backwards compatibility but was re-
implemented on top of load(), while its interface is unchanged its precise behavior has likely been altered for
some cases (it shouldn’t throw exceptions anymore in many cases where it previously did)
This document attempts to explain the behavior and limitations of load().
Data
The input data is a regular row-major matrix of strings (in Python datatype terms, a list of rows, each row being
a list of str, all rows must be of equal length). Each row must be the same length as the fields list preceding it
in the argslist.
Each field of fields maps to a (potentially relational and nested) field of the model under import, and the corre-
sponding column of the data matrix provides a value for the field for each record.
Generally speaking each row of the input yields a record of output, and each cell of a row yields a value for the
corresponding field of the row’s record. There is currently one exception for this rule:
One to Many fields
Because O2M fields contain multiple records “embedded” in the main one, and these sub-records are fully dependent
on the main record (are no other references to the sub-records in the system), they have to be spliced into the matrix
somehow. This is done by adding lines composed only of o2m record fields below the main record:
+-------+-------+===========+===========+-------+-------+
|value01|value02||o2m/value01|o2m/value02||value03|value04|
+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+-------+-------+
| | ||o2m/value11|o2m/value12|| | |
+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+-------+-------+
+-------+-------+===========+===========+-------+-------+
|value11|value12||o2m/value01|o2m/value02||value13|value14|
+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+-------+-------+
+-------+-------+===========+===========+-------+-------+
|value21|value22| | |value23|value24|
+-------+-------+-----------+-----------+-------+-------+
the sections in double-lines represent the span of two o2m fields. During parsing, they are extracted into their own
data matrix for the o2m field they correspond to.
Import process
Here are the phases of import. Note that the concept of “phases” is fuzzy as it’s currently more of a pipeline, each
record moves through the entire pipeline before the next one is processed.
Extraction
The first phase of the import is the extraction of the current row (and potentially a section of rows following it if it has
One to Many fields) into a record dictionary. The keys are the fields originally passed to load(), and the values
are either the string value at the corresponding cell (for non-relational fields) or a list of sub-records (for all relational
fields).
This phase also generates the rows indexes for any Messages produced thereafter.
Conversion
This second phase takes the record dicts, extracts the database ID and external ID if present and attempts to convert
each field to a type matching what OpenERP expects to write.
• Empty fields (empty strings) are replaced with the False value
• Non-empty fields are converted through ir_fields_converter
Note: if a field is specified in the import, its default will never be used. If some records need to have a value and
others need to use the model’s default, either specify that default explicitly or do the import in two phases.
Char, text and binary fields
Are returned as-is, without any alteration.
Boolean fields
The string value is compared (in a case-insensitive manner) to 0, false and no as well of any translation thereof
loaded in the database. If the value matches one of these, the field is set to False.
Otherwise the field is compared to 1, true and yes (and any translation of these in the database). The field is always
set to True, but if the value does not match one of these a warning will also be output.

Integers and float fields
The field is parsed with Python’s built-in conversion routines (int and float respectively), if the conversion fails
an error is generated.
Selection fields
The field is compared to 1. the values of the selection (first part of each selection tuple) and 2. all translations of the
selection label found in the database.
If one of these is matched, the corresponding value is set on the field.
Otherwise an error is generated.
The same process applies to both list-type and function-type selection fields.
Many to One field
If the specified field is the relational field itself (m2o), the value is used in a name_search. The first record returned
by name_search is used as the field’s value.
If name_search finds no value, an error is generated. If name_search finds multiple value, a warning is generated
to warn the user of name_search collisions.
If the specified field is a external ID (m2o/id), the corresponding record it looked up in the database and used as the
field’s value. If no record is found matching the provided external ID, an error is generated.
If the specified field is a database ID (m2o/.id), the process is the same as for external ids (on database identifiers
instead of external ones).
Many to Many field
The field’s value is interpreted as a comma-separated list of names, external ids or database ids. For each one, the
process previously used for the many to one field is applied.
One to Many field
For each o2m record extracted, if the record has a name, external ID or database ID the database ID is looked up and
checked through the same process as for m2o fields.
If a database ID was found, a LINK_TO command is emmitted, followed by an UPDATE with the non-db values for
the relational field.
Otherwise a CREATE command is emmitted.
Date fields
The value’s format is checked against DEFAULT_SERVER_DATE_FORMAT, an error is generated if it does not match
the specified format.
Datetime fields
The value’s format is checked against DEFAULT_SERVER_DATETIME_FORMAT, an error is generated if it does not
match.
The value is then interpreted as a datetime in the user’s timezone. The timezone is specified thus:
• If the import context contains a tz key with a valid timezone name, this is the timezone of the datetime.
• Otherwise if the user performing the import has a tz attribute set to a valid timezone name, this is the timezone
of the datetime.
• Otherwise interpret the datetime as being in the UTC timezone.
Create/Write
If the conversion was successful, the converted record is then saved to the database via (ir.model.data).
_update.
Error handling
The import process will only catch 2 types of exceptions to convert them to error messages: ValueError during the
conversion process, and sub-exceptions of psycopg2.Error during the create/write process.
The import process uses savepoint to:
• protect the overall transaction from the failure of each _update call, if an _update call fails the savepoint
is rolled back and the import process keeps going in order to obtain as many error messages as possible during
each run.
• protect the import as a whole, a savepoint is created before starting and if any error is generated that savepoint
is rolled back. The rest of the transaction (anything not within the import process) will be left untouched.
Messages
A message is a dictionary with 5 mandatory keys and one optional key:

type the type of message, either warning or error. Any error message indicates the import failed and was
rolled back.
message the message’s actual text, which should be translated and can be shown to the user directly
rows a dict with 2 keys from and to, indicates the range of rows in data which generated the message
record a single integer, for warnings the index of the record which generated the message (can be obtained from a
non-false ids result)
field the name of the (logical) OpenERP field for which the error or warning was generated
moreinfo (optional) A string, a list or a dict, leading to more information about the warning.
• If moreinfo is a string, it is a supplementary warnings message which should be hidden by default
• If moreinfo is a list, it provides a number of possible or alternative values for the string
• If moreinfo is a dict, it is an OpenERP action descriptor which can be executed to get more information
about the issues with the field. If present, the help key serves as a label for the action (e.g. the text of the
link).

1.6.6 Perfoming joins in select
New in version 7.0.

Starting with OpenERP 7.0, an auto_join attribute is added on many2one and one2many fields. The purpose is
to allow the automatic generation of joins in select queries. This attribute is set to False by default, therefore not
changing the default behavior. Please note that we consider this feature as still experimental and should be used only
if you understand its limitations and targets.
Without _auto_join, the behavior of expression.parse() is the same as before. Leafs holding a path beginning
with many2one or one2many fields perform a search on the relational table. The result is then used to replace the
leaf content. For example, if you have on res.partner a domain like [('bank_ids.name', 'like', 'foo')]
with bank_ids linking to res.partner.bank, 3 queries will be performed :
• 1 on res_partner_bank, with domain [('name', '=', 'foo')], that returns a list of res.partner.bank ids
(bids)
• 1 on res_partner, with a domain ['bank_ids', 'in', bids)], that returns a list of res.partner ids (pids)
• 1 on res_partner, with a domain [('id', 'in', pids)]
When the auto_join attribute is True on a relational field, the destination table will be joined to produce only one
query.
• the relational table is accessed using an alias: '"res_partner_bank" as
res_partner__bank_ids. The alias is generated using the relational field name. This allows to
have multiple joins with different join conditions on the same table, depending on the domain.
• there is a join condition between the destination table and the main table: res_partner__bank_ids.
"partner_id"=res_partner."id"
• the condition is then written on the relational table: res_partner__bank_ids."name" = 'foo'
This manipulation is performed in expression.parse(). It checks leafs that contain a path, i.e. any domain containing a
‘.’. It then checks whether the first item of the path is a many2one or one2many field with the auto_join attribute
set. If set, it adds a join query and recursively analyzes the remaining of the leaf, using the same behavior. If the
remaining path also holds a path with auto_join fields, it will add all tables and add every necessary join conditions.
Chaining joins allows to reduce the number of queries performed, and to avoid having too long equivalent leaf re-
placement in domains. Indeed, the internal queries produced by this behavior can be very costly, because they were
generally select queries without limit that could lead to huge (‘id’, ‘in’, [...]) leafs to analyze and execute.
Some limitations exist on this feature that limits its current use as of version 7.0. This feature is therefore considered
as experimental, and used to speedup some precise bottlenecks in OpenERP.
List of known issues and limitations:
• using auto_join bypasses the business logic; no name search is performed, only direct matches between ids
using join conditions
• ir.rules are not taken into account when analyzing and adding the join conditions
List of already-supported corner cases :
• one2many fields having a domain attribute. Static domains as well as dynamic domain are supported
• auto_join leading to functional searchable fields
Typical use in OpenERP 7.0:
• in mail module: notification_ids field on mail_message, allowing to speedup the display of the various mailboxes
• in mail module: message_ids field on mail_thread, allowing to speedup the display of needaction counters and
documents having unread messages
1.7 Deploying with Gunicorn
Starting with OpenERP 6.1, the server and web addons are WSGI compliant. In particular, support for the Gunicorn
HTTP server is available. For some background information and motivation, please read http://www.openerp.com/
node/1106. To install Gunicorn, please refer to Gunicorn’s website.
1.7.1 Summary
Configuring and starting an OpenERP server with Gunicorn is straightfoward. The different sections below give more
details but the following steps are all it takes:
1. Use a configuration file, passing it to ``gunicorn`` using the ``-c``

option.
2. Within the same configuration file, also configure OpenERP.
3. Run ``gunicorn openerp:wsgi.core.application -c gunicorn.conf.py``.
1.7.2 Sample configuration file
A sample gunicorn.conf.py configuration file for Gunicorn can be found in the OpenERP server source tree. It
is fairly well commented and easily customizable for your own usage. While reading the remaining of this page, it is
advised you take a look at the sample gunicorn.conf.py file as it makes things easier to follow.
1.7.3 Configuration
Gunicorn can be configured by a configuration file and/or command-line arguments. For a list of available options,
you can refer to the official Gunicorn documentation http://gunicorn.org/configure.html.
When the OpenERP server is started on its own, by using the openerp-server script, it can also be configured by
a configuration file or its command-line arguments. But when it is run via Gunicorn, it is no longer the case. Instead,
as the Gunicorn configuration file is a full-fledged Python file, we can import openerp in it and configure directly
the server.
The principle can be summarized with this three lines (although they are spread across the whole sample gunicorn.
conf.py file):
import openerp
conf = openerp.tools.config
conf['addons_path'] = '/home/openerp/addons/trunk,/home/openerp/web/trunk/addons'
The above three lines first import the openerp library (i.e. the one containing the OpenERP server implementation).
The second one is really to shorten repeated usage of the same variable. The third one sets a parameter, in this case
the equivalent of the --addons-path command-line option.
Finally, Gunicorn offers a few hooks so we can call our own code at some points in its execution. The most important
one is the on_starting hook. It lets us properly initialize the openerp library before Gunicorn starts handling re-
quests. pre_request and post_request are called before and after requests are handled. We provide functions
in openerp.wsgi.core that can be used to define those hooks: a typical Gunicorn configuration for OpenERP
will thus contains:
on_starting = openerp.wsgi.core.on_starting
pre_request = openerp.wsgi.core.pre_request
post_request = openerp.wsgi.core.post_request

1.7.4 Running
Once a proper configuration file is available, running the OpenERP server with Gunicorn can be done with the follow-
ing command:
> gunicorn openerp:wsgi.core.application -c gunicorn.conf.py
openerp must be importable by Python. The simplest way is to run the above command from the server source
directory (i.e. the directory containing the openerp module). Alternatively, the module can be installed on your
machine as a regular Python library or added to your PYTHONPATH.
1.7.5 Running behind a reverse proxy
If you intend to run Gunicorn behind a reverse proxy (nginx is recommended), an alternative entry point is available
in openerp.wsgi.proxied. That entry point uses werkzeug’s ProxyFix class to set a few headers. You first have
to explicitely import that sub-module if you want to use it. So add this line in the configuration file:
import openerp.wsgi.proxied
and then adapt the command-line:
> gunicorn openerp:wsgi.proxied.application -c gunicorn.conf.py
1.7. Deploying with Gunicorn 73


CHAPTER 2
OpenERP Server API
2.1 ORM and models
75
76 Chapter 2. OpenERP Server API

CHAPTER 3
Concepts
Database ID The primary key of a record in a PostgreSQL table (or a virtual version thereof), usually varies from
one database to the next.
External ID
77
78 Chapter 3. Concepts
Index
D
Database ID, 77
E
External ID, 77
79

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OpenERP Server Developers

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2 OpenERP Server API 75

1.1 Getting started with OpenERP development

1.1.1 Installation from sources

mkdir source;cd source

bzr cat -d lp:~openerp-dev/openerp-tools/trunk setup.sh | sh

-rw-rw-r-- 1 openerp openerp 5465 2012-04-17 11:05 Makefile

Finally, launch the OpenERP server:

1.1.2 Command line options

Using the command

--version show program version number and exit

2 Chapter 1. OpenERP Server

-u UPDATE, --update=UPDATE update a module (use "all" for all modules)

Database related options

Options from previous versions

Two configuration files are available:

1.1. Getting started with OpenERP development 3

./openerp-server -s or ./openerp-server --save

You can specify alternate configuration files with

-c CONFIG, --config=CONFIG specify alternate config file

Configure addons locations

1.1.4 Start-up script

New in version 6.1.

1.2.1 OpenERP as a multitenant three-tiers architecture

4 Chapter 1. OpenERP Server

Fig. 1.1: OpenERP 6.1 architecture for embedded web deployment

1.2.2 MVC architecture in OpenERP

According to Wikipedia, “a Model-view-controller (MVC) is an architectural pattern used in software engineering”.

6 Chapter 1. OpenERP Server

Fig. 1.2: Model-View-Controller diagram

1.2.3 Network communications and WSGI

1.3.1 Module structure

A module can contain the following elements:

Fig. 1.3: Module composition

Python import file __init__.py

Manifest file __openerp__.py

8 Chapter 1. OpenERP Server

For the openacademy module, here is an example of __openerp__.py declaration file:

The Record Field tag

The attributes for the field tag are the following:

10 Chapter 1. OpenERP Server

<record model="ir.actions.report.xml" id="l0">

<record model="res.company" id="main_company">

<record model="res.users" id="user_admin">

This last record defines the admin user :

<field name="company_id" ref="main_company"/>

<field name="partner_id" search="[]" model="res.partner"/>

A function tag can contain other function tags.

<function model="ir.ui.menu" name="search" eval="[[('name','=','Operations')]]"/>

To develop new objects

12 Chapter 1. OpenERP Server

Changed in version 5.0.

1.3.2 Objects, Fields and Methods

Python import file init.py

Manifest file openerp.py

For the openacademy module, here is an example of openerp.py declaration file: