Naming

All DocTypes in Frappe have a primary key called name. This is the unique id by which you will be finding records and manipulating them using the ORM. You can configure how docs should be named when a new document is created. The following are the ways you can setup naming in a DocType.

DocType autoname

You can set the name by the autoname property of the DocType.

1. field:[fieldname]

The doc name is fetched from the value of the field provided.

2. [series]

You can provide a naming pattern which will be incremented automatically. For e.g, if you set it as PRE.#####, the first document created will have the name as PRE00001, and second one will be PRE00002 and so on.

3. naming_series:

The naming pattern is derived from a field in the document. For e.g, you have a field naming_series in your document and it's value is set as PRE.#####, then that will be the pattern used for generating the name. This value can change per document. So the next document can have a different pattern.

This works only if you have a field called naming_series in your DocType.

4. Prompt

If you set it as Prompt, the name is required to be filled in manually.

5. Format

This is the most flexible one when it comes to configuring your naming schemes.

Let's say we have

EXAMPLE-{MM}-test-{fieldname1}-{fieldname2}-{#####}

Everything outside the curly braces are plain text. Keywords inside the curly braces will be evaluated based on what they represent. In this case:

• MM: will be replaced by the current month
• fieldname1: will be replaced by the value of fieldname1 in the document
• #####: will generate a series, which starts with 00001

So the final name may look like, EXAMPLE-02-test-value1-value2-00001

By Controller Method

You can also define a name programatically by declaring an autoname method in the controller class. Example

from frappe.model.naming import getseries

class Project(Document):
 def autoname(self):
 # select a project name based on customer
 prefix = `P-{}-`.format(self.customer)
 self.name = getseries(prefix, 3)

By Document Naming Rule

You can also create rules for naming DocTypes by creating Document Naming Rule

You can create multiple Document Naming Rules for a particular doctype that can be applied selectively based on filters.

To define a Document Naming Rule you have to specify

1. Document Type it is being applied on
2. Priority of the rule (rules with higher priority will be applied first)
3. Conditions to apply the rule
4. Naming Rules

Numbering

You can define various numbering prefixes for the rule based on the conditions defined. This is done by setting a prefix and the number of digits for that rule.

For example if you are creating a separate numbering for high priority todos:

1. Prefix: todo-high-
2. Digits: 3

Will lead to numbering like todo-high-001, todo-high-002 and so on.

Priority of Naming

Naming priority is as follows

1. Document Naming Rule
2. autoname controller method.
3. autoname DocType property

Special Rules

1. Child DocTypes do not follow naming rules
2. Amended documents have a suffix (-1, -2 etc) to the original document