stock.forced_placeholder

The replenishment screen in Odoo Inventory has to communicate something subtle: what will happen if you do nothing. An orderpoint without an explicit Route is not broken; Odoo will pick one (Buy, Manufacture, a transfer route) according to the product's configuration. Leaving that cell blank would hide exactly the information a planner needs.

The stock module's answer is this widget. stock.forced_placeholder is the standard many2one with a one-line template inheritance: where the base web.Many2One template renders the value if present, this one adds an else branch that prints the placeholder text. The XML pairs it with the inherited placeholder_field option pointing at a computed char field (route_id_placeholder), so the muted text in an empty cell is the actual route Odoo would use for that specific product, not a generic hint.

The source's second override is a comment-documented detail: in readonly mode canOpen is forced off, "to remove the wrong link and the hand cursor on hover", because a cell whose visible text is only a placeholder should not look clickable.

The pattern here matters to anyone configuring replenishment, and to anyone designing views where defaults do the work.

For planners: the muted route text is the difference between "no route configured" (a problem) and "default route applies" (fine). Reading the replenishment list correctly means knowing that muted text = computed default, solid text = explicit override. Odoo even pairs it with decoration-muted in the view so overridden cells stand out.

For view designers: any field where an empty value falls back to a computed default deserves this treatment. Pricelists falling back to the company default, a picking type falling back to the warehouse's, an analytic account falling back to the project's: showing the effective default in placeholder gray converts support tickets ("why did Odoo buy instead of manufacture?") into self-service. The widget lives in stock, but the pattern is fifteen lines to reproduce in any module.

As the replenishment view uses it

<field name="route_id" widget="stock.forced_placeholder"
       options="{'no_create': True, 'no_open': True, 'placeholder_field': 'route_id_placeholder'}"
       decoration-muted="not route_id"/>

Empty cells show the computed default route in muted text; picking a route overrides it in solid text.

The model side of the pair

route_id_placeholder = fields.Char(compute="_compute_route_id_placeholder")

def _compute_route_id_placeholder(self):
    for orderpoint in self:
        orderpoint.route_id_placeholder = orderpoint._get_default_route().display_name or ""

Reusing the pattern on your own default-driven field

<field name="picking_type_id" widget="stock.forced_placeholder"
       options="{'placeholder_field': 'picking_type_placeholder'}"/>

Works on any many2one, provided the stock module is installed.

The entire widget is two overrides, and each teaches something about Odoo 19's many2one architecture.

The template override is surgical. It inherits web.Many2One with an xpath on the t-if="props.value" node and adds a t-else printing props.placeholder. Everything else, autocomplete, create flows, Search More, is untouched inheritance. This is only possible because Odoo 19 extracted the reusable Many2One component; in 18 the same feature would have meant forking a much larger template, which is presumably why the widget only appeared in 19.

The props override shows the composition pattern. The field component computes computeM2OProps(this.props) and then overrides one key: canOpen: !props.readonly && props.canOpen. Fifteen lines total. If you write custom many2one variants, this file is the smallest complete example of the 19-era recipe: wrapper component, computeM2OProps, buildM2OFieldDescription.

The placeholder renders wherever the value is empty, editable or readonly. In editable mode the base widget would show the placeholder inside the input anyway; the else-branch matters in readonly renderings, which is exactly the replenishment list's default state.

Odoo 20 is expected at Odoo Experience in Brussels, 24 to 26 September 2026. The notes below are read from the public development branch and are not final until release.

Behavior is unchanged on master. The file is converted to the new props-schema API, and its source comment is telling: it inlines a typed copy of the many2one props "still declared old-style" in the base module, a snapshot of Odoo mid-migration. The template branch and the readonly canOpen override are identical. We re-verify against the shipped release.