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>
    <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.