Background Processes in Odoo

Have you ever got a timeout while doing some long operation or some parallel call in the main process flow?

You will have a few options to handle this in a different way. The most typical is setting up a Scheduled action and then make it process for a reasonable interval. Anyway, we can always learn to look into the server code and here is a great example of the procurement module v9.0:

    def _procure_calculation_all(self, cr, uid, ids, context=None):
        """
        @param self: The object pointer.
        @param cr: A database cursor
        @param uid: ID of the user currently logged in
        @param ids: List of IDs selected
        @param context: A standard dictionary
        """
        with Environment.manage():
            proc_obj = self.pool.get('procurement.order')
            #As this function is in a new thread, i need to open a new cursor, because the old one may be closed
            new_cr = self.pool.cursor()
            scheduler_cron_id = self.pool['ir.model.data'].get_object_reference(new_cr, SUPERUSER_ID, 'procurement', 'ir_cron_scheduler_action')[1]
            # Avoid to run the scheduler multiple times in the same time
            try:
                with tools.mute_logger('openerp.sql_db'):
                    new_cr.execute("SELECT id FROM ir_cron WHERE id = %s FOR UPDATE NOWAIT", (scheduler_cron_id,))
            except Exception:
                _logger.info('Attempt to run procurement scheduler aborted, as already running')
                new_cr.rollback()
                new_cr.close()
                return {}
            user = self.pool.get('res.users').browse(new_cr, uid, uid, context=context)
            comps = [x.id for x in user.company_ids]
            for comp in comps:
                proc_obj.run_scheduler(new_cr, uid, use_new_cursor=new_cr.dbname, company_id = comp, context=context)
            #close the new cursor
            new_cr.close()
            return {}

Then, finally, the function that triggers the calculation associated with a button on the UI:

    def procure_calculation(self, cr, uid, ids, context=None):
        """
        @param self: The object pointer.
        @param cr: A database cursor
        @param uid: ID of the user currently logged in
        @param ids: List of IDs selected
        @param context: A standard dictionary
        """
        threaded_calculation = threading.Thread(target=self._procure_calculation_all, args=(cr, uid, ids, context))
        threaded_calculation.start()
        return {'type': 'ir.actions.act_window_close'}


If you need to do complex and more time consuming workflow, we really suggest using other tools.
Just get in touch we have a solution for each situation.