XML data files

While CSV files provide a simple and compact format to represent data, XML files are more powerful and give more control over the loading process. Their filenames are not required to match the model to be loaded. This is because the XML format is much richer and that information is provided by the XML elements inside the file.

We already used XML data files in the previous chapters. The user interface components, such as views and menu items, are in fact records stored in system models. The XML files in the modules are the means used to load these records into the instance database.

To showcase this, we will add a second data file to the todo_app module, data/todo_task.xml, with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0"?> 
<odoo noupdate="1"> 
  <!-- Data to load -->
  <record model="todo.task" id="todo_task_c...