QWeb is the primary templating engine used by Odoo2. It
is an XML templating engine1 and used mostly to generate HTML
fragments and pages.
Template directives are specified as XML attributes prefixed with t-,
for instance t-if for conditionals, with elements
and other attributes being rendered directly.
To avoid element rendering, a placeholder element is also available,
which executes its directive but doesn’t generate any output in and of
itself:
Test
will result in:
Test
if condition is true, but:
Test
will result in:
Test
QWeb has a primary output directive which automatically HTML-escape its
content limiting XSS risks when displaying user-provided content: esc.
esc takes an expression, evaluates it and prints the content:
rendered with the value value set to 42 yields:
42
There is one other output directive raw which behaves the same as
respectively esc but does not HTML-escape its output. It can be useful
to display separately constructed markup (e.g. from functions) or already
sanitized user-provided markup.conditionals
QWeb has a conditional directive if, which evaluates an expression given
as attribute value:
ok
The element is rendered if the condition is true:
ok
but if the condition is false it is removed from the result:
The conditional rendering applies to the bearer of the directive, which does
not have to be :
ok
will give the same results as the previous example.
Extra conditional branching directives t-elif and t-else are also
available:
Happy birthday!
Welcome master!
Welcome!
QWeb has an iteration directive foreach which take an expression returning
the collection to iterate on, and a second parameter t-as providing the
name to use for the “current item” of the iteration:
will be rendered as:
1
2
3
Like conditions, foreach applies to the element bearing the directive’s
attribute, and
is equivalent to the previous example.
foreach can iterate on an array (the current item will be the current
value), a mapping (the current item will be the current key) or an integer
(equivalent to iterating on an array between 0 inclusive and the provided
integer exclusive).
In addition to the name passed via t-as, foreach provides a few other
variables for various data points:
Warning
$as will be replaced by the name passed to t-as$as_allthe object being iterated over$as_valuethe current iteration value, identical to $as for lists and integers,
but for mappings it provides the value (where $as provides the key)$as_indexthe current iteration index (the first item of the iteration has index 0)$as_sizethe size of the collection if it is available$as_firstwhether the current item is the first of the iteration (equivalent to
$as_index == 0)$as_lastwhether the current item is the last of the iteration (equivalent to
$as_index + 1 == $as_size), requires the iteratee’s size be
available$as_parityeither "even" or "odd", the parity of the current iteration round$as_evena boolean flag indicating that the current iteration round is on an even
index$as_odda boolean flag indicating that the current iteration round is on an odd
index
These extra variables provided and all new variables created into the
foreach are only available in the scope of the``foreach``. If the
variable exists outside the context of the foreach, the value is copied
at the end of the foreach into the global context.
attributes
QWeb can compute attributes on-the-fly and set the result of the computation
on the output node. This is done via the t-att (attribute) directive which
exists in 3 different forms:t-att-$namean attribute called $name is created, the attribute value is evaluated
and the result is set as the attribute’s value:
will be rendered as:
instead of just an expression, often useful to mix literal and non-literal
string (e.g. classes):
will be rendered as:
123t-att=mappingif the parameter is a mapping, each (key, value) pair generates a newattribute and its value:
will be rendered as:
item of the pair is the name of the attribute and the second item is the
value:
will be rendered as:
QWeb allows creating variables from within the template, to memoize a
computation (to use it multiple times), give a piece of data a clearer name,
…
This is done via the set directive, which takes the name of the variable
to create. The value to set can be provided in two ways:a t-value attribute containing an expression, and the result of its
evaluation will be set:
will print 3
if there is no t-value attribute, the node’s body is rendered and set
as the variable’s value:
okwill generate <li>ok</li> (the content is escaped as we
used the esc directive)
Note
using the result of this operation is a significant use-case for
the raw directive.calling sub-templates
QWeb templates can be used for top-level rendering, but they can also be used
from within another template (to avoid duplication or give names to parts of
templates) using the t-call directive:
This calls the named template with the execution context of the parent, if
other_template is defined as:
the call above will be rendered as
will be rendered as
1
.However this has the problem of being visible from outside the t-call.
Alternatively, content set in the body of the call directive will be
evaluated before calling the sub-template, and can alter a local context:
The body of the call directive can be arbitrarily complex (not just
set directives), and its rendered form will be available within the called
template as a magical 0 variable:
This template was called with content:
being called thus:
content
will result in:
This template was called with content:
content
The t-field directive can only be used when performing field access
(a.b) on a “smart” record (result of the browse method). It is able
to automatically format based on field type, and is integrated in the
website’s rich text edition.
t-options can be used to customize fields, the most common option
is widget, other options are field- or widget-dependent.debuggingt-debuginvokes a debugger using PDB’s set_trace API. The parameter should
be the name of a module, on which a set_trace method is called:
is equivalent to importlib.import_module("pdb").set_trace()HelpersRequest-based
Most Python-side uses of QWeb are in controllers (and during HTTP requests),
in which case templates stored in the database (as
views) can be trivially rendered by calling
odoo.http.HttpRequest.render():
response = http.request.render('my-template', {
'context_value': 42
})
This automatically creates a Response object which can
be returned from the controller (or further customized to suit).View-based
At a deeper level than the previous helper is the render method on
ir.ui.view:render(cr, uid, id[, values][, engine='ir.qweb][, context])
Renders a QWeb view/template by database id or external id.
Templates are automatically loaded from ir.ui.view records.
Sets up a number of default values in the rendering context:requestthe current WebRequest object, if anydebugwhether the current request (if any) is in debug modeurl-encoding utility functionthe corresponding standard library modulethe corresponding standard library modulethe corresponding standard library modulesee modulekeep_querythe keep_query helper function
Parameters
values – context values to pass to QWeb for rendering
engine (str) – name of the Odoo model to use for rendering, can be
used to expand or customize QWeb locally (by creating
a “new” qweb based on ir.qweb with alterations)JavascriptExclusive directivesdefining templates
The t-name directive can only be placed at the top-level of a template
file (direct children to the document root):
It takes no other parameter, but can be used with a element or any
other. With a element, the should have a single child.
The template name is an arbitrary string, although when multiple templates
are related (e.g. called sub-templates) it is customary to use dot-separated
names to indicate hierarchical relationships.template inheritance
Template inheritance is used to alter existing templates in-place, e.g. to
add information to templates created by other modules.
Template inheritance is performed via the t-extend directive which takes
the name of the template to alter as parameter.
When t-extend is combined with t-name a new template with the given name
is created. In this case the extended template is not altered, instead the
directives define how to create the new template.
In both cases the alteration is then performed with any number of t-jquery
sub-directives:
new elementThe t-jquery directives takes a CSS selector. This selector is used
on the extended template to select context nodes to which the specified
t-operation is applied:appendthe node’s body is appended at the end of the context node (after the
context node’s last child)prependthe node’s body is prepended to the context node (inserted before the
context node’s first child)beforethe node’s body is inserted right before the context nodeafterthe node’s body is inserted right after the context nodeinnerthe node’s body replaces the context node’s childrenreplacethe node’s body is used to replace the context node itselfattributesthe nodes’s body should be any number of attribute elements,
each with a name attribute and some textual content, the named
attribute of the context node will be set to the specified value
(either replaced if it already existed or added if not)No operationif no t-operation is specified, the template body is interpreted as
javascript code and executed with the context node as this
Warning
while much more powerful than other operations, this mode is
also much harder to debug and maintain, it is recommended to
avoid itdebugging
The javascript QWeb implementation provides a few debugging hooks:t-logtakes an expression parameter, evaluates the expression during rendering
and logs its result with console.log:
will print 42 to the consolet-debugtriggers a debugger breakpoint during template rendering:
will stop execution if debugging is active (exact condition depend on the
browser and its development tools)t-jsthe node’s body is javascript code executed during template rendering.
Takes a context parameter, which is the name under which the rendering
context will be available in the t-js’s body:
console.log("Foo is", ctx.foo);
Helperscore.qweb
(core is the web.core module) An instance of QWeb2.Engine() with all module-defined template
files loaded, and references to standard helper objects _
(underscore), _t (translation function) and JSON.
core.qweb.render can be used to
easily render basic module templatesAPIclassQWeb2.Engine()
The QWeb “renderer”, handles most of QWeb’s logic (loading,
parsing, compiling and rendering templates).
OpenERP Web instantiates one for the user in the core module, and
exports it to core.qweb. It also loads all the template files
of the various modules into that QWeb instance.
A QWeb2.Engine() also serves as a “template namespace”.QWeb2.Engine.QWeb2.Engine.render(template[, context])
Renders a previously loaded template to a String, using
context (if provided) to find the variables accessed
during template rendering (e.g. strings to display).
Arguments
template (String) – the name of the template to render
context (Object) – the basic namespace to use for template
rendering
Returns
String
The engine exposes an other method which may be useful in some
cases (e.g. if you need a separate template namespace with, in
OpenERP Web, Kanban views get their own QWeb2.Engine()
instance so their templates don’t collide with more general
“module” templates):QWeb2.Engine.QWeb2.Engine.add_template(templates)
Loads a template file (a collection of templates) in the QWeb
instance. The templates can be specified as:An XML stringQWeb will attempt to parse it to an XML document then load
it.A URLQWeb will attempt to download the URL content, then load
the resulting XML string.A Document or NodeQWeb will traverse the first level of the document (the
child nodes of the provided root) and load any named
template or template override.
A QWeb2.Engine() also exposes various attributes for
behavior customization:QWeb2.Engine.QWeb2.Engine.prefix
Prefix used to recognize directives during parsing. A string. By
default, t.QWeb2.Engine.QWeb2.Engine.debug
Boolean flag putting the engine in “debug mode”. Normally,
QWeb intercepts any error raised during template execution. In
debug mode, it leaves all exceptions go through without
intercepting them.QWeb2.Engine.QWeb2.Engine.jQuery
The jQuery instance used during template inheritance processing.
Defaults to window.jQuery.QWeb2.Engine.QWeb2.Engine.preprocess_node
A Function. If present, called before compiling each DOM
node to template code. In OpenERP Web, this is used to
automatically translate text content and some attributes in
templates. Defaults to null.
Genshi, although it does not use (and
has no support for) XML namespaces
Jinja and Mako.