Odoo eCommerce Basics – Products, Cart, and Checkout

Odoo eCommerce: A Store Wired Into the ERP

Odoo's eCommerce (the "Website Sale" app) turns the website into an online shop — but its defining feature is that the storefront shares the same database as Inventory, Sales, and Accounting, so there's no syncing between "the shop" and "the business."

The integration is the value: in a typical stack you run a separate store platform and constantly sync products, stock, and orders with your back office. In Odoo it's one system — a product's price and stock on the website are the same records Inventory manages, a checkout creates a real Sales order, and confirming it flows straight into invoicing and stock deduction. No integration middleware, no data drift. Core concepts: product variants (size/color) map to Odoo's variant system; pricelists drive dynamic pricing and promotions; delivery and payment methods plug into shipping and payment-provider modules; taxes come from the accounting configuration. For developers: customizing eCommerce means QWeb templates (product pages, checkout steps), controllers for custom flows, and snippets for merchandising — plus respecting that these are public pages handling money, so security (validate input, correct pricing server-side, never trust the client cart totals) and correctness matter. Payment security in particular: prices and totals must be computed/verified server-side, never taken from the browser. The takeaway: Odoo eCommerce is best understood not as a bolt-on store but as the ERP's data exposed and transacted through a web storefront.

The website_sale Module

website_sale depends on website, sale, and account. It adds:

• Website fields on product.template (published, website description, ribbons)
• The /shop controller with product listing, filtering, and search
• Cart management at /shop/cart
• Checkout flow at /shop/checkout
• Payment integration via the payment module
• eCommerce categories (product.public.category)

Product Website Fields

Key fields added by website_sale to product.template:

Products are only visible if is_published = True and website_id matches the current website (or is False).

Cart and Checkout Flow

The cart is a sale order in draft state (state='draft') linked to the current visitor's session. Key controllers:

The draft order is retrieved or created via request.website.sale_get_order(). After payment, it is confirmed automatically and becomes a confirmed sale order in the backend.

Pricelists and Pricing

Displayed prices in the shop depend on the active pricelist. The active pricelist is determined by:

1. The visitor's country (geo-IP based)
2. The portal user's partner pricelist
3. A pricelist code in the URL (?pl=SUMMER20)
4. The website's default pricelist

# Get current pricelist in a controller
pricelist = request.website.get_current_pricelist()

# Get price for a product
product = request.env['product.template'].browse(product_id)
price = product.with_context(pricelist=pricelist.id).price

Extending the Shop Controller

Extend the shop listing or product detail page by subclassing WebsiteSale:

from odoo.addons.website_sale.controllers.main import WebsiteSale

class ExtendedShop(WebsiteSale):

    def _get_search_domain(self, search, category, attrib_values,
                           search_in_description=True):
        """Add custom filter: only show products in stock."""
        domain = super()._get_search_domain(
            search, category, attrib_values, search_in_description
        )
        domain += [('qty_available', '>', 0)]
        return domain

    def _prepare_product_values(self, product, category, search, **kwargs):
        """Add extra context to the product detail page."""
        values = super()._prepare_product_values(
            product, category, search, **kwargs
        )
        values['related_books'] = request.env['library.book'].sudo().search([
            ('author', '=', product.name),
        ], limit=4)
        return values

Common Customizations

Frequent eCommerce customization patterns:

Interview Questions

• What does the Odoo eCommerce module do?
• How do you publish a product to the online shop?
• How do product variants work?
• How does eCommerce connect to Inventory and Sales?
• What is a payment provider/acquirer?

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