Models – Structuring the Application Data

In Chapter 3, Your First Odoo Application - A Practical Overview, we saw an overview of all the main components involved in building an application for Odoo. In these following chapters, it's time to explain the several layers that make up an application—models, views, and business logic—in more detail.

We will extend the To-Do app built in the previous chapter, and take it to another level. What if, instead of only a simple list of tasks, we also have a Kanban board showing the tasks as cards, and organize them into columns according to the stage they're at, such as To Do, Doing, and Done?

The following chapters will work toward this goal. Right now, in this chapter, we will learn how to use models to design the data structures that support applications in general, and our kanban extension in particular.

We will use that to explore the capabilities of models and fields, including defining model relations, adding computed fields, creating data constraints, and using the available extension (or inheritance) mechanisms to add them to models provided by already existing modules.

Let's get started then!