[Boxwise - fair donations distribution to refugees] Generating packages in bulk - new feature

Project introduction

Repository

https://github.com/boxwise/boxwise_WMS

What is Boxwise?

As stated in project's README file, Boxwise is a web-app, which makes it easy for organisations to source, store and distribute donated goods to people in need in a fair and dignified way.

How it works (in a nutshell)?

Handing out the donations can get very hectic. And especially without proper warehouse management tool. That's why Drop in the Ocean NGO implemented so called DropAppin several of its camps. It helps coordinators to sort and easily store all incoming boxes full of donations based on clothes size, clothes type and gender in the "big warehouse". It also tracks which clothes types are being asked for the most and therefore can coodinators react accordingly and bring to the camp more pieces of particular items. App also grants every camp resident (refugee) X amount of "drops" every moth which a "virtual currency" used to buy clothes from the donations. This is very important as this gives refugees the control over what they wear and how they identify themselves. It's a very important psycho-social activity which they lost!

^{Here is the video where you can see how DiH volunteers use the DropApp :)}

Why did I join the project?

During my 12 days of volunteering in Greece this January in Drop in the Ocean(DiH) Skaramagas camp, I've been using DropApp daily and realized how amazing this tool is. I got to know it was developed by former volunteers last year and I contacted them on Facebook. During a quick Google Hangouts we had, they explained me the issues of the application (unscalability -> every camp needs their own web server and tech person) and the reason why Boxwise was created. It's basically a DropApp 2.0. Better, more stable and scalable version ( hopefully ;) ).

^{DropApp in it's current form (Basic HTML, bit of CSS & Javascript and custom PHP framework developed by former volunteer which only 3 poeple in this world understand :D)}

Tech talk

Odoo

We are using the open source ERP system called Odoo as the base for Boxwise. It's a modular system which allows to add various modules into the environment and there are already several modules which address the exact same area - warehouse management.
Sounds great right? The only problem is, the whole team which is currently 4 people have almost zero experience in Odoo. Ok, let's be honest..not almost zero...zero :D

Anyway, let's not lose more time and get into the nitty-gritty. My task was:

New Feature - generate packages in bulk

• My pull request: HERE
• Detailed task description: Feature request #9
• Language: Python, XML
• Commits: 6
• Additions: 64 (cumulative commit by commit - 100)
• Deletions: 2 (cumulative commit by commit - 40)
• Time spent: good 12 hours!! (don't laugh, first time Odoo user here, I've read at least 70 pages of Odoo Essensials book to get required knowledge how to do this + we still didn't have a debugger last week)

Usecase of the new feature: We're using GitHub issues as a list of feature requests as well, so you the more detailed description can be found in the link above. It's a crucial feature used by coordinators (warehouse volunteers) daily. Donation boxes don't come one by one but in bulks. Each box gets labeled by unique QR label which leads to form where coordinator fills parameters of items in the box (gender, size, clothes type, items count). Generating these packages (QR codes/labels) in bulk saves ton of time daily! For better understanding, watch the Youtube video linked above :)

^{Placement of the feature in the whole workflow for better understanding :)}

Ok, I guess GIF makes up for thousand of various workflows and schemes right? Well then, here you go, the process in the old DropApp (Javascript + PHP) which I recreated in Boxwise (Odoo + XML + Python)

^{DropApp 1.0}

And my implementation in Odoo for Boxwise :) Ohhh I love it :D

^{Boxwise (DropApp 2.0) - we've agreed that QR codes shouldn't be displayed to the coordinator (he needs to download & print them anyway) but write it down as an issue because it'd require to return 2 actions from server and we don't know how to do it yet :)}

Implementation & Code

Step 1: How to register python classes in Odoo

3 minutes into it, I knew I'm screwed. I had no idea where and how to start. Hans has managed to add the "Generate QR labels" option to menu with XML (which I later changed) and then passed it to me. I needed a way how to get input from user back to server side. Googling..googling...and then I've found this 380 pages long PDF :D What a nice weekend ahead of me :) Eventually, I started to make some microsteps..

from . import wizards

^{Register new folder in odoo root __init__.py}

from . import generate_qr_count_wizard 

^{Add __init__.py in new folder and import everything from new class}

Till now it all makes sense. Standard python right? But creating the class (so called model) has some specific Odoo rules . It has to inherit from model.Model class or some other submodels..Eventually, my dummy class "Book" was in and I could move on :)

Step 2: Get user input, trigger server action & change menu item from Hans

After I've managed to link my dummy test model (class) to Odoo, it was time to create some real models. User popup (simple alert in Javascript) is called wizard in Odoo. It can be implemented with a class which has to have a TransientModel as a superclass.

class QrGenerateWizard(models.TransientModel):
    _name = 'boxwise_wms.qr.generate.wizard'
    _description = 'Number of QR codes to be generated'
    number = fields.Char(string='Number of labels', required=True, default=0)

^{Overriding superclass variables is done by underscore, new user-defined variables start with small letters}

^{Details are in commit #7031f2301d0eab437f33aff54521847a23b67eb5}

Step 3: Submit wizard and generate packages

This one was pretty straightforward as I already knew a bit about Odoo wizards at this point. Method annotated by @api.multi with the same name as the wizard button was needed.

< footer>
   < button name="mass_generate" type="object" string="Generate" 
     class="oe_highlight"/>
   < button special="cancel" string="Cancel"/>
< /footer>

 @api.multi
 def mass_generate(self):
     _logger.debug('Starting batch QR codes generation')
     package_model = self.env['stock.quant.package']
     number_of_packages = int(self.number)
     created_packages = []  
     for _ in range(number_of_packages):
        created_packages.append(package_model.create({}))

^{Details are in commit #e03800020918c00dd4bcf0b16c3c6239004fbdee}

Step 4: Navigate back to packages tree view

It's little bit counterintuitive (at least for me) but the way navigation from server is done in Odoo is that you basically just return the act_window action with result model set to packages. The same one which is bound to menu item. Return is called from method which generates packages (obviously). If Odoo model method starts with underscore, it's private. It looks like this:

return self._open_packages_list()

 @api.model    
 def _open_packages_list(self):
    return {
        'type':'ir.actions.act_window',
        'res_model':'stock.quant.package',
        'view_type':'list',
        'view_mode':'list',
        'target':'current'
     }
 

^{Details are in commit #e03800020918c00dd4bcf0b16c3c6239004fbdee}

Step 5: Cleanup according to Odoo best practices

Nothing special here. I've replaced camelCasing to snake_casing which is the good practice in all Odoo modules for common variables.

^{Details are in commit #d9adbdfec3f90c340fb340280abfb594488be084}

Bonus commit: Removing unneeded table header alignment

This one came pretty handy as I was struggling with Odoo for couple of hours at this point and then I've noticed this completely random right alignment CSS which had nothing to do there :) Boom, delete :) Finally something to commit haha :D
^{Details are in commit #0d5ba1dd19009f294aa772214777112f86eb0b34}

Next steps for Boxwise team

1. Continue implementing basic DropApp functionality into Boxwise for the next 2 weeks
2. In two weeks, Hans and James are flying over to Athens to test our first version in local warehouse in Pampiraiki
3. Month of development
4. Flying back to Greece from 3rd to 8th April and hopefully implement Boxwise in one of Drop in the Ocean camps. I'm flying this time as well :)

GitHub Account

https://github.com/DurkoMatko