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. Setting _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 ( _ ).