How to Auto Generate Name Column with Sequence in Odoo

Anyone who uses Odoo can spot that the Name column of a model like Sale or Invoice is generated automatically. In Odoo, we call it Sequence.

In this post, we will try to create a customer model and allow its name column to be auto-generated.

class MyModel(models.Model):
    _name = 'my.model'
    _description = 'My custom model'

    name = fields.Char(string="Name", readonly=True, select=True, copy=False, default='New')

	@api.model
	def create(self, vals):
	   if vals.get('name', 'New') == 'New':
	       vals['name'] = self.env['ir.sequence'].next_by_code('my.model') or 'New'
	   result = super(MyModel, self).create(vals)
	   return result

In the model above, we inherit create method to override the name field with sequence value.

Next, we need to add the sequence definition to an XML file.

<record id="my_model_sequence" model="ir.sequence">
	<field name="name">My Model Sequence</field>
	<field name="code">my.model</field>
	<field name="active">TRUE</field>
	<field name="prefix">MYMODEL-</field>
	<field name="padding">3</field>
	<field name="number_next">1</field>
	<field name="number_increment">1</field>
</record>

After activation, a record will be created in ir.sequence model.

• name – Name of the record.
• code – Your model’s table.
• active – Determine whether the sequence is active or not.
• prefix – Prefix of the sequence.
• padding – Sequence size
• number_next – Next number that will be used
• number_increment – The next number of the sequence will be incremented by this.

With the setting above, your new model’s record is named MYMODEL-001, MYMODEL-002, MYMODEL-003, and so on.