Features

• Key matching: instead of always using IDs, match keys to unique-constrained fields, for example update a product by specifying its product_code instead of its database ID or external ID
• One2many and Many2many support: create or update for example invoice lines with a syntax that is very readable and easy to update
• As long as you respect the appropriate format and field names, you are free to add/remove/rename columns, even if they are not in the initial Pattern used for the export

Table of contents

Exporting

• Open the tree view of any model and tick some record selection boxes.
• In the sidebar, click on the “Export with Pattern” button
• Select the pattern that you wish to use, click export and download the generated file.
• A “Pattern file” is created, and its job along with it. Depending on the success or failure of the job, you will receive a red/green notification on your window.

Importing

You have two options:

• Open the tree view of any model and tick some record selection boxes (for this step, these don’t matter, we only just want to show the sidebar).
• In the sidebar, click on the “Import with Pattern” button
• Select a pattern, upload your file and click import.
• A “Pattern file” is created, and its job along with it. Depending on the success or failure of the job, you will receive a red/green notification on your window. You can check the details in the appropriate Import/Export menu.

Or:

• Access the Import wizard through the Import/Export menu
• Select a pattern
• Click on the “Import” button

Import syntax

One of the strength of pattern_import_export module is the ability to reference records by natural keys (business keys) instead of technical keys (xmlid or database id).

One or more columns can be the natural key of the record to find and update or to create a new record. Each column in the natural key has to be suffixed by “#key”.

One or more columns can be used as foreign keys can be accessed with “|” syntax. (for instance on partner: country_id|code )

Example

Here is an example of a simple update on product.product: Existing record:

• id: 10
• name: “Product 1”
• default_code: “PRD1”

The generated export will look like:

id	name	default_code
10	Product 1	PRD1

Updated file

id	name	default_code
10	Product 1-bis	PRD1B

After import, our record will have been updated:

• xml id: “__export__.product1”
• name: “Product 1-bis”
• default_code: “PRD1B”

Now, let’s update some relational fields. Here is some more of our starting data:

• seller_ids:

• id (of the seller_id which is a res.partner): 22
• name (seller): Partner 1
• price: 10

The generated export should be like

id	name	default_code	seller_ids|1|id	seller_ids|1|price
10	Product 1	PRD1	22	10

Let’s say “ref” is a unique-constrained Char field. For the seller, instead of using its id, let’s use its ref.

id	name	default_code	seller_ids|1|ref#key	seller_ids|1|price
10	Product 1	PRD1	partner1-ref	10

So this #key means that Odoo should search for a res.partner where the ref matches the cell value.

Lets take another example, instead of using the id, we want to use the product’s default_code as key.

id	name	default_code#key	seller_ids|1|ref#key	seller_ids|1|price
	Product 1	PRD1	partner1-ref	10

Odoo will search the product with the matching default_code and update it.

Add a new export format

1. Inherit the ir.exports model.
2. Add your new file format in the selection field export_format;
3. Implements functions _export_with_record_<format> and _read_import_data_<format>.

Please take care of iterators (yield) to avoid loading full file into the system memory.