Introducing the Library project

To explain the developer tools, we will use a simple project: we will create a very simple Library app. Our Library aims to keep a record of our Books and their Authors. It should keep a list of the Authors and the Books authored by each Author.

Our Library app needs two Models: Authors and Books. These two Models have a many-to-many relationship between them: each Author can have many Books, and each Book can have many Authors.

Odoo already provides the built-in Partner Model, with the res.partner technical name, to represent people, organizations, and addresses. For example, customers, suppliers, contact people, and application users are all Partners.

We will make our life simpler if we reuse it for the Authors of our Library app. We will be adding an Is Book Author? flag to this Model, and a menu item showing only the Author Partners.

The book we will create has a completely new Model, the corresponding form, and list views, and a menu item to access them.