1. Mailing Lists
  2. Contributors
  3. Partner unicity

Contributors mailing list archives

contributors@odoo-community.org

Browse archives

Re: Partner unicity

Re: stock_no_negative on apps.odoo.com

Avatar

Partner unicity

by
Alexinux, Alexis de Lattre
- 17/04/2018 18:26:08
Dear OCA friends,

As you know, it is often difficult to keep a database without duplicate entries in the partner table. Odoo users often create a new customer/supplier in the database without prior search to see if this customer/supplier already exists. I know that the CRM module has a tool to merge partners, but I'd like to work on technical solutions that would help prevent duplicates, instead of trying to fix them after they occur. I'm not trying to find a perfect solution that avoid all duplicates because I think it's impossible, but I'd like to find pragmatic solutions that would block as many duplicates as possible.

I have several ideas for this ; each idea could be a module to develop in the OCA :

* partner_email_unique :
Would add an sql constraint on the email field. To make it more efficient, this module could also inherit create to strip() and lower() the email field, so that the constraint is more efficient.

* partner_mobile_unique :
Would add an sql constraint on the mobile field. To make it more efficient, it would depend on base_phone, so that we are sure that the phone fields are "clean" and written in the standard E.164 format (+33 4 72 08 08 87).

* partner_vat_unique :
Would add a constraint on the vat field... but unfortunately the 'vat' field is synchronised between parent and child partners (cf https://github.com/odoo/odoo/blob/10.0/odoo/addons/base/res/res_partner.py#L411), so we cannot just add an SQL constraint... We would also need to have "clean" VAT numbers (inherit create to strip(), upper() and replace(' ', '')). Ideas are welcomed to find another option than SQL constraint without too much performance impact.

This could be extended to country-specific company numbers via localization modules...

Obviously, it is not possible to put a unique constraint on the phone nor fax field (in the same company/family, several people may share the same fixed phone or fax number). It would also be stupid to put a constraint on the name field, as several people can have the same name.

SQL constraint should certainly include the 'company_id' field (i.e. "unique(email, company_id)"), because, in multi-company environments, partners are sometimes not shared between companies.

All ideas and experiences are welcomed before I start to write modules on this topic. I haven't searched deeply if there are existing OCA modules on this topic, so please mention them if you know some.

Regards,

--
Alexis de Lattre
Akretion France - 35B rue Montgolfier - 69100 Villeurbanne - France

Follow-Ups