Build a Global Smart Search in Odoo 19 (Across All Models) | Google-Style Search

▶️ Introduction

A global search feature dramatically improves usability in Odoo — especially when users need to find records across many different apps without switching menus. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to implement a smart global search system in Odoo 19, enabling users to perform quick searches across models like Contacts, Products, Sales Orders, Invoices, and more — all from a single search input. YouTube

This article expands on the concepts covered in the Odooistic video tutorial. Whether you’re building customer portals, dashboards, or advanced navigation systems, adding a smart search can elevate the user experience of your Odoo instance.

🎥 Video Tutorial: 

📌 What You’ll Learn

By the end of this blog, you will know how to:

✔ Add a search input box accessible on main layouts

✔ Build a backend search controller to handle queries

✔ Create an API that searches across multiple models

✔ Display consolidated results grouped by model

🛠 Step-by-Step Implementation

Here’s how to implement a global smart search in your Odoo 19 project:

🔹 1. Create the Search Input UI

Add a search input box to your main view (e.g., in the navbar or header). This will be the entry point for user queries.

Example (XML snippet):

<header>
  <input type="search" name="global_search" placeholder="Search all records..." id="global_search_input"/>
  <button type="button" id="global_search_button">Search</button>
</header>

This UI lets users enter a search term and trigger the search.

🔹 2. Frontend Logic (JavaScript)

Use JavaScript to capture the input value and send it to a backend controller via AJAX:

document.getElementById('global_search_button').addEventListener('click', () => {
  const query = document.getElementById('global_search_input').value;
  if (query) {
    fetch(`/global_search?q=${encodeURIComponent(query)}`)
      .then(response => response.json())
      .then(data => {
        // render results dynamically
      });
  }
});

This code sends the user’s search query to the server and receives matched results in JSON format.

🔹 3. Backend Controller (Python)

Create a controller in your custom module to receive the search query and perform lookups across models:

from odoo import http
from odoo.http import request

class GlobalSearchController(http.Controller):
    @http.route('/global_search', type='json', auth='user')
    def global_search(self, q):
        models_to_search = [
            ('res.partner', 'name'),
            ('product.product', 'name'),
            ('sale.order', 'name'),
            ('account.move', 'name'),
        ]
        results = {}
        for model, field in models_to_search:
            domain = [(field, 'ilike', q)]
            records = request.env[model].sudo().search_read(domain, ['id', field], limit=10)
            if records:
                results[model] = records
        return results

This controller:

• Accepts the search term (q)

• Searches across specified models using an ilike domain

• Returns a JSON structure of matching records grouped by model

🔹 4. Render Results

Once the JSON is returned, the front end can dynamically display the results in a dropdown, modal, or a dedicated results page. For example, group items under headings like:

• Contacts

• Products

• Sales Orders

• Invoices

Each section shows matching records with clickable links.

🔎 Result Behavior

This search:

• Performs case-insensitive matching

• Searches key fields like name

• Limits results to improve performance

• Groups results by model

• Returns a clean JSON response

You can extend the logic to include fields like email, reference codes, or even compute relevance ranking.

🧠 Tips & Best Practices

✔ Limit searches per model to avoid long response times.

✔ Consider adding full-text search indexes if performance becomes a concern.

✔ Extend search to include related fields (e.g., product category or partner email).

✔ Add loader animations to improve UX for long queries.