API changes from OpenERP Web 6.1 to 7.0

Supported browsers

The OpenERP Web Client supports the following web browsers:

  • Internet Explorer 9+
  • Google Chrome 22+
  • Firefox 13+
  • Any browser using the latest version of Chrome Frame

DataSet -> Model

The 6.1 DataSet API has been deprecated in favor of the smaller and more orthogonal Model API, which more closely matches the API in OpenERP Web’s Python side and in OpenObject addons and removes most stateful behavior of DataSet.

Migration guide

  • Actual arbitrary RPC calls can just be remapped on a Model() instance:

    dataset.call(method, args)

    or

    dataset.call_and_eval(method, args)

    can be replaced by calls to openerp.web.Model.call():

    model.call(method, args)

    If callbacks are passed directly to the older methods, they need to be added to the new one via .then().

    Note

    The context_index and domain_index features were not ported, context and domain now need to be passed in “in full”, they won’t be automatically filled with the user’s current context.

  • Shorcut methods (name_get, name_search, unlink, write, ...) should be ported to openerp.web.Model.call(), using the server’s original signature. On the other hand, the non-shortcut equivalents can now use keyword arguments (see call()‘s signature for details)

  • read_slice, which allowed a single round-trip to perform a search and a read, should be reimplemented via Query() objects (see: query()) for clearer and simpler code. read_index should be replaced by a Query() as well, combining offset() and first().

Rationale

Renaming

The name DataSet exists in the CS community consciousness, and (as its name implies) it’s a set of data (often fetched from a database, maybe lazily). OpenERP Web’s dataset behaves very differently as it does not store (much) data (only a bunch of ids and just enough state to break things). The name “Model” matches the one used on the Python side for the task of building an RPC proxy to OpenERP objects.

API simplification

DataSet has a number of methods which serve as little more than shortcuts, or are there due to domain and context evaluation issues in 6.1.

The shortcuts really add little value, and OpenERP Web 6.2 embeds a restricted Python evaluator (in javascript) meaning most of the context and domain parsing & evaluation can be moved to the javascript code and does not require cooperative RPC bridging.

DataGroup -> also Model

Alongside the deprecation of DataSet for Model(), OpenERP Web 7.0 removes DataGroup and its subtypes as public objects in favor of a single method on Query(): group_by().

Migration guide

Rationale

While the DataGroup API worked (mostly), it is quite odd and alien-looking, a bit too Smalltalk-inspired (behaves like a self-contained flow-control structure for reasons which may or may not have been good).

Because it is heavily related to DataSet (as it yields DataSet objects), deprecating DataSet automatically deprecates DataGroup (if we want to stay consistent), which is a good time to make the API more imperative and look more like what most developers are used to.

But as DataGroup users in 6.1 were rare (and there really was little reason to use it), it has been removed as a public API.