I have a few interdependent models with Many2One and One2Many relations in between them.
I have the views all set up but now that I'm adding data through data files to test everything I find that I have no idea how to go about adding these records.
Should I do a run where I basically declare the records while keeping relation values null then update the records with relations later?
Additionally, what's the value of a relational field supposed to be? An array or something?
You can always use the demo and data files of builtin modules as reference
as you can see here category_ids is is Many2many field (same applies for one2many fields)
<field name="category_ids" eval="[(6, 0, [ref('employee_category_2')])]"/>
to understand the value of the eval attribute read the following:
(0, 0, { values }) link to a new record that needs to be created with the given values dictionary
(1, ID, { values }) update the linked record with id = ID (write *values* on it)
(2, ID) remove and delete the linked record with id = ID (calls unlink on ID, that will delete the object completely, and the link to it as well)
(3, ID) cut the link to the linked record with id = ID (delete the relationship between the two objects but does not delete the target object itself)
(4, ID) link to existing record with id = ID (adds a relationship)
(5) unlink all (like using (3,ID) for all linked records)
(6, 0, [IDs]) replace the list of linked IDs (like using (5) then (4,ID) for each ID in the list of IDs)
and for the ref function in it's value ( i.e this part ref('employee_category_2') ) it's a python function evaluated when the data file is loaded, it takes the XML recordID of the related field ( sometimes you might need to use external ID - for example in this case the external id of the record is hr.employee_category_2)