survey_description_page

In the Questions tab of a survey, the title column carries two jobs beyond showing text. It has to let an author jump from a row straight into the full question form, and it has to make section rows look like something that can be opened rather than a bold line of text. This widget adds both to an otherwise ordinary text cell.

In edit mode the input is placed in an input group with a small button beside it, labelled Open section, which asks the surrounding list to open that row. In read mode, rows whose section flag is set get a pencil appended after the text, as a visual hint. Neither affordance changes the value; the field still stores and saves exactly what a plain text field would.

The important thing about it is that it is not self-sufficient. The open button calls a helper that the parent widget publishes into the shared environment. Placed on a normal form field, the widget renders and the button does nothing useful.

This is a small usability detail with a real effect on how a survey gets built. Authors work in the list, adding and reordering rows quickly, and the moment they need the full question form they should not have to hunt for a way in. A button in the cell they are already editing is the shortest path, and the pencil on section rows answers the silent question of whether that bold row is clickable.

The wider point for custom work is that these small cell-level affordances are cheap. A template inheriting the standard text field, one button and one environment call, and a list becomes navigable. The cost is coupling: the widget now depends on its container, which is fine inside one app and awkward if someone copies the widget name into an unrelated view.

The core usage

<field name="question_and_page_ids" widget="question_page_one2many">
  <list decoration-bf="is_page">
    <field name="title" widget="survey_description_page"/>
  </list>
</field>

The decoration-bf expression is doing double duty: it bolds section rows and it also causes is_page to be loaded, which the pencil needs.

Making sure the section flag is loaded

<list>
  <field name="is_page" column_invisible="True"/>
  <field name="title" widget="survey_description_page"/>
</list>

Explicit and safer than relying on a decoration expression, since the widget declares no dependency on the field.

What will not work

<!-- on a plain form field: the button has nothing to call -->
<field name="title" widget="survey_description_page"/>

The open button calls a helper published by the parent x2many widget. Outside it, the cell renders but the button is dead.

The class extends the standard text field and does two things in setup: it calls the parent setup, then adds a layout class to the input element once it exists, so the input shares the row with the button instead of pushing it out. Its only other method asks the environment to open the current record.

That call is the coupling worth knowing about. The environment key it uses is published by question_page_one2many, which sets it up when it mounts. Inside the survey questions list the key is there; anywhere else it is not, and the click resolves to nothing.

The template inherits the base text field template and makes two edits. In the editable branch it replaces the plain input with an input group containing the input and a button carrying the Open section title, whose click is stopped from bubbling so it does not also trigger row selection. In the read-only branch it appends a pencil icon after the formatted value, conditioned on the record's section flag.

The inherited option set is the base text widget's: a declared dynamic placeholder field, plus two keys read in the extractor and never declared, which control the dynamic placeholder machinery and its model reference. They work here because the descriptor is spread unchanged, though a title column in a list is an unlikely place to want them.

Odoo 20 is expected at Odoo Experience in Brussels, 24 to 26 September 2026. The development branch is unstable and this may still change; we re-verify the page after release.

Behavior is unchanged, presentation is not. The template is restructured on the development branch: an intermediate template holds the two additions, the open button moves into the base widget's input-button area rather than an input group of its own, and both icons switch from the older icon font to Odoo's own icon set. The section pencil also becomes a real button element instead of a bare icon.

The dependency stands. The open action still goes through the same environment helper, and core still pairs the widget with the survey question list on that branch.