How to Set Default Values to Fields in Odoo 13

Technical Odoo 13

In Odoo, sometimes we have to set a specific value for a field by default every time we create a record of that model. To achieve this task we have two key options/methods.

1. Passing value through kwargs

2. Setting value with default_get function

1) Passing value through kwargs

A field in Odoo has multiple kwargs namely string, read-only, required, etc. Among one of them is the kwarg called default.

We can pass a value through default kwarg in two ways

* Set the value directly

* Execute a function and return the value

- We can set the default value directly by assigning the value to kwarg like this

state = fields.Selection([
    	('draft', 'Quotation'),
    	('sent', 'Quotation Sent'),
    	('sale', 'Sales Order'),
    	('done', 'Locked'),
    	('cancel', 'Cancelled'),
    	], string='Status', readonly=True, copy=False, index=True, tracking=3, default='draft')

This is the code for the state of sale.order model, here default is set as ‘draft’, which is the Quotation state, so every time a new sale order is created, by default the state will be Quotation.

- For returning a value from a function to kwarg, we can run an anonymous lambda function or write the function name to be called.

With lambda function: let's look at the ‘Salesperson’ field of sale.order

user_id = fields.Many2one(
   'res.users', string='Salesperson', index=True, tracking=2, default=lambda self: self.env.user,
    	domain=lambda self: [('groups_id', 'in', self.env.ref('sales_team.group_sale_salesman').id)])

Here the currently logged in user is calculated with the lambda function lambda self: self.env.user and is set as the default Salesperson as shown below,

With function call: To compute a default value through a function call, the function should be defined before the field is defined. For example, we will look at the code of the ‘Expiration’ field in sale.order model called validity_date.

First, the function is defined

def _default_validity_date(self):
    	if self.env['ir.config_parameter'].sudo().get_param('sale.use_quotation_validity_days'):
        	days = self.env.company.quotation_validity_days
        	if days > 0:
            	return fields.Date.to_string(datetime.now() + timedelta(days))
    	return False

Then this function is called in the field definition,

validity_date = fields.Date(string='Expiration', readonly=True, copy=False, states={'draft': [('readonly', False)], 'sent': [('readonly', False)]},
                            	default=_default_validity_date)

Here the _default_validity_date function takes the number that is set in the configuration and computer date with today and returns the value

So when a new sale order is created, 30 days after today will be shown as default Expiration date as shown below

2) Setting value with default_get function

In this method, we can set and compute the default values of multiple fields by inheriting the default_get function and updating values into it.

Eg: Two custom fields are created in the sale order module, sales_person_contact and sales_person_email. We then set the default value of these as shown below