The OpenERP search view really is a sub-view, used in support of views acting on collections of records (list view or graph view, for instance).
Its main goal is to collect information from its widgets (themselves collecting information from the users) and make those available to the rest of the client.
The search view’s root is SearchView(). This object should never need to be created or managed directly, its lifecycle should be driven by the ViewManager().
The search view defines a number of internal and external protocols to communicate with the objects around and within it. Most of these protocols are informal, and types available for inheritance are more mixins than mandatory.
on_loaded
Fires when the search view receives its view data (the result of fields_view_get). Hooking up before the event allows for altering view data before it can be used.
By the time on_loaded is done, the search view is guaranteed to be fully set up and ready to use.
on_search
Event triggered after a user asked for a search. The search view fires this event after collecting all input data (contexts, domains and group_by contexts). Note that the search view does not merge those (or otherwise evaluate them), they are returned as provided by the various inputs within the view.
on_clear
Triggered after a user asked for a form clearing.
An important concept in the search view is that of input. It is both an informal protocol and an abstract type that can be inherited from.
Inputs are widgets which can contain user data (a char widget for instance, or a selection box). They are capable of action and of reaction:
registration
This is an input action. Inputs have to register themselves to the main view (which they receive as a constructor argument). This is performed by pushing themselves on the openerp.base.SearchView.inputs array.
get_context
An input reaction. When it needs to collect contexts, the view calls get_context() on all its inputs.
Inputs can react in the following manners:
Return a context (an object), this is the “normal” response if the input holds a value.
Return a value that evaluates as false (generally null). This value indicates the input does not contain any value and will not affect the results of the search.
Raise openerp.base.search.Invalid() to indicate that it holds a value but this value can not be used in the search (because it is incorrectly formatted or nonsensical). Raising Invalid() is guaranteed to cancel the search process.
Invalid() takes three mandatory arguments: an identifier (a name for instance), the invalid value, and a validation message indicating the issue.
get_domain
The second input reaction, the possible behaviors of inputs are the same as for get_context.
The openerp.base.search.Input() type implements registration on its own, but its implementations of get_context and get_domain simply raise errors and must be overridden.
One last action is for filters, as an activation order has to be kept on them for some controls (to establish the correct grouping sequence, for instance).
To that end, filters can call openerp.base.Search.do_toggle_filter(), providing themselves as first argument.
Filters calling do_toggle_filter() also need to implement a method called is_enabled(), which the search view will use to know the current status of the filter.
The search view automatically triggers a search after calls to do_toggle_filter().
The search view has a pretty simple and linear life cycle, in three main steps:
init()
Nothing interesting happens here
start()
Called by the main view’s creator, this is the main initialization step for the list view.
It begins with a remote call to fetch the view’s descriptors (fields_view_get).
Once the remote call is complete, the on_loaded even happens, holding three main operations:
make_widgets()
Builds and returns the top-level widgets of the search view. Because it returns an array of widget lines (a 2-dimensional matrix of widgets) it should be called recursively by container widgets (openerp.base.search.Group() for instance).render()
Called by the search view on all top-level widgets. Container widgets should recursively call this method on their own children widgets.
Widgets are provided with a mapping of {name: value} holding default values for the search view. They can freely pick their initial values from there, but must pass the mapping to their children widgets if they have any.
start()
The last operation of the search view startup is to initialize all its widgets in order. This is again done recursively (the search view starts its children, which have to start their own children).
stop()
Used before discarding a search view, allows the search view to disable its events and pass the message to its own widgets, gracefully shutting down the whole view.
In a search view, the widget is simply a unit of display.
All widgets must be able to react to three events, which will be called in this order:
render()
Called with a map of default values. The widget must return a String, which is its HTML representation. That string can be empty (if the widget should not be represented).
Widgets are responsible for asking their children for rendering, and for passing along the default values.
start()
Called without arguments. At this point, the widget has been fully rendered and can set its events up, if any.
The widget is responsible for starting its children, if it has any.
stop()
Gives the widget the opportunity to unbind its events, remove itself from the DOM and perform any other cleanup task it may have.
Even if the widget does not do anything itself, it is responsible for shutting down its children.
An abstract type is available and can be inherited from, to simplify the implementation of those tasks:
The search namespace (openerp.base.search) provides two more abstract types, used to implement input widgets:
openerp.base.search.Input() is the most basic input type, it only implements input registration.
If inherited from, descendant classes should not call its implementations of get_context() and get_domain().
openerp.base.search.Field() is used to implement more “field” widgets (which allow the user to input potentially complex values).
It provides various services for its subclasses:
Sets up the field attributes, using attributes from the field and the view node.
It fills the widget with Filter() if the field has any child filter.
It automatically generates an identifier based on the field type and the field name, using make_id().
It sets up a basic (overridable) template attribute, combined with the previous tasks, this makes subclasses of Field() render themselves “for free”.
It provides basic implementations of get_context and get_domain, both hinging on the subclasses implementing get_value() (which should return a correct, converted Javascript value):
get_context()
Checks if the field has a non-null and non-empty (String) value, and that the field has a context attr.
If both conditions are fullfilled, returns the context.
get_domain()
Only requires that the field has a non-null and non-empty value.
If the field has a filter_domain, returns it immediately. Otherwise, builds a context using the field’s name, the field operator and the field value, and returns it.
OpenERP Web’s list views don’t actually exist as such in OpenERP itself: a list view is an OpenERP tree view in the view_mode form.
The overall purpose of a list view is to display collections of objects in two main forms: per-object, where each object is a row in and of itself, and grouped, where multiple objects are represented with a single row providing an aggregated view of all grouped objects.
These two forms can be mixed within a single list view, if needed.
The root of a list view is openerp.base.ListView(), which may need to be overridden (partially or fully) to control list behavior in non-view cases (when using a list view as sub-component of a form widget for instance).
As with most OpenERP Web views, the list view’s init() takes quite a number of arguments.
While most of them are the standard view constructor arguments (view_manager, session, element_id, dataset and an optional view_id), the list view adds a number of options for basic customization (without having to override methods or templates):
The addition event is used to add a record to an existing list view. The default behavior is to switch to the form view, on a new record.
Addition behavior can be overridden by replacing the do_add_record() method.
The selection event is triggered when a given record is selected in the list view.
It can be overridden by replacing the do_select() method.
The default behavior is simply to hide or display the list-wise deletion button depending on whether there are selected records or not.
The deletion event is triggered when the user tries to remove 1..n records from the list view, either individually or globally (via the header button).
Deletion can be overridden by replacing the do_delete() method. By default, this method calls unlink() in order to remove the records entirely.
Note
the list-wise deletion button (next to the record addition button) simply proxies to do_delete() after obtaining all selected record ids, but it is possible to override it alone by replacing do_delete_selected().
These classes should be moved to other sections of the doc as needed, probably.
Fetches and returns the records of the model model whose ids are in ids.
The results are in the same order as the inputs, but elements may be missing (if there is no record left for the id)
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| Returns: | a list of records, in the same order as the list of ids |
| Return type: | list |
Performs a search() followed by a read() (if needed) using the provided search criteria
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| Returns: | A structure (dict) with two keys: ids (all the ids matching the (domain, context) pair) and records (paginated records matching fields selection set) |
| Return type: | list |
Provides the format’s content type
Creates a valid filename for the format (with extension) from the provided base name (exension-less)
Returns all valid export formats
| Returns: | for each export format, a pair of identifier and printable name |
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| Return type: | [(str, str)] |
Conversion method from OpenERP’s export data to whatever the current export class outputs
| Params list fields: | |
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| a list of fields to export | |
| Params list rows: | |
| a list of records to export | |
| Returns: | |
| Return type: | bytes |
Loads all menu items (all applications and their sub-menus).
| Parameters: | req (< session -> OpenERPSession >) – A request object, with an OpenERP session attribute |
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| Returns: | the menu root |
| Return type: | dict(‘children’: menu_nodes) |
Proxies an HTTP request through a JSON request.
It is strongly recommended to not request binary files through this, as the result will be a binary data blob as well.
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| Returns: | file content |
Evaluates sequences of domains and contexts, composing them into a single context, domain or group_by sequence.
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| Returns: | a 3-dict of:
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Gets back a previously saved action. This method can return None if the action was saved since too much time (this case should be handled in a smart way).
| Parameters: | key (integer) – The key given by save_session_action() |
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| Returns: | The saved action or None. |
| Return type: | anything |
This method store an action object in the session object and returns an integer identifying that action. The method get_session_action() can be used to get back the action.
| Parameters: | the_action (anything) – The action to save in the session. |
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| Returns: | A key identifying the saved action. |
| Return type: | integer |
Converts domains and contexts from the view into Python objects, either literals if they can be parsed by literal_eval or a special placeholder object if the domain or context refers to free variables.
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The toolbar is a mapping of section_key: [action_descriptor]
We need to clean all those actions in order to ensure correct round-tripping
Concatenate file content return (concat,timestamp) concat: concatenation of file content, read by reader timestamp: max(os.path.getmtime of file_list)
Concatenate xml files return (concat,timestamp) concat: concatenation of file content timestamp: max(os.path.getmtime of file_list)
For historical reasons, OpenERP has weird dealings in relation to view_mode and the view_type attribute (on window actions):
This methods simply folds the view_type into view_mode by adding a new view mode list which is the result of the tree view_mode in conjunction with the form view_type.
TODO: this should go into the doc, some kind of “peculiarities” section
| Parameters: | action (dict) – an action descriptor |
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| Returns: | nothing, the action is modified in place |
While the server generates a sequence called “views” computing dependencies between a bunch of stuff for views coming directly from the database (the ir.actions.act_window model), it’s also possible for e.g. buttons to return custom view dictionaries generated on the fly.
In that case, there is no views key available on the action.
Since the web client relies on action['views'], generate it here from view_mode and view_id.
Currently handles two different cases:
| Parameters: | action (dict) – action descriptor dictionary to generate a views key for |
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Parses an arbitrary string containing a context, transforms it to either a literal context or a web.common.nonliterals.Context
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Parses an arbitrary string containing a domain, transforms it to either a literal domain or a web.common.nonliterals.Domain
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Testing for the OpenERP Web core is similar to testing addons: the tests live in openerpweb.tests, unittest2 is the testing framework and tests can be run via either unittest2 (unit2 discover) or via nose (nosetests).
Tests for the OpenERP Web core can also be run using setup.py test.