Python pyqt - determine if signal is emitted by user action - qt

I have a QtableView which column are resized when new data is added. User can also change the column width by direct interaction with the horizontalHeader (click-drag). Both events emit the signal QtableView.horizontalHeader().sectionResized().
I would like to determine if this signal was emitted by the user changing the column width or by a refresh from a function call. How can I distinguish the events?
I tried using sender() but both action refer to the same sender.

This is something you must do yourself - there is no magic method for it.
It would probably be possible to subclass QHeaderView and monitor the various user-initiated events that may trigger a resize, but that kind of solution might be hard to get right. A much simpler and more obvious solution would be to set a flag when new data is being added to the table and unset it once the columns have been resized. Then you can check the flag inside any slots connected to the sectionResized signal to see what triggered it:
def updateTable(self):
self._updating = True
# add new data...
# resize columns...
self._updating = False
def handleSectionResized(self):
if self._updating:
print('updating')
else:
print('user interaction')

Related

How to not get changed-signals to be emitted when setting the current-index in QAbstactItemView?

I'm programmatically changing the selected item with setCurrentIndex() of my Tree- and TableViews.
If the current item has changed, a multitude of signals are emitted (currentChanged(), currentColumnChanged, etc).
I'm listening to some of these signals in order to be informed when the user changes the selection.
Is there a way/a signal to distinguish between user-selected and programmatically selected events?
I tried using the activated()-signal on the views, but this seems to not behave the same way on different platforms (sometimes activated is triggered only if double-clicked).
Maybe, you could just block all signals while making your change?
QSignalBlocker or QObject::blockSignals could help:
{
const QSignalBlocker blocker(myWidget);
myWidget->setCurrentIndex(someIndex);
}
In your slot, you can use QObject::sender() to return the QObject to you. From there, there are a handful of ways you should be able to distinguish the source.
What I finally did, and it works in my case because I have a single-thread application, I created a custom variable programmatic-select, which I set to true before calling setCurrentIndex(). In the changeSelection()-slot I check this variable and do nothing if it is true.
Very important for this to work is to connect the slot to the signal with the connection-type DirectConnection. In this case the slot is executed synchronously when the signal is emitted and I'm sure the value of my variable is safe.

QFileDialog component signals

I am subclassing QFileDialog to try to get some custom behavior. I would like to connect to signals emitted by components of the dialog, e.g. the textEdited signal when the file name line edit is manually edited. I understand that QFileDialog emits some signals itself, but these do not cover the cases I would like to respond to.
I have two ways about this I can think of, but don't know how to implement. One is to somehow attain a reference to the component to connect to it's signal. The other would be something with event filters, but the event source is the dialog itself, so I don't know how to determine where mouse clicks or key presses occur.
Are either of these methods feasible? Or another way?
Here is one option (your first suggestion):
dialog = QFileDialog()
layout = dialog.layout()
# for i in range(layout.rowCount()):
# for j in range(layout.columnCount()):
# try:
# print i,j
# print layout.itemAtPosition(i,j).widget()
# except:
# pass
line_edit = layout.itemAtPosition(2,1).widget()
line_edit.setText('Hello Stack Overflow')
dialog.exec_()
This gives you access to the QLineEdit in the dialog, which has a bunch of signals you can connect to.
I've also included the code I used to find this widget. I just iterated over the widgets in the layout of the dialog and found the indices of the one I was after. So if you need access to anything else in the dialog, you should be able to find it pretty easily!
Downside to this method: If the layout changes in a future version of Qt, this will break. I suppose you could make the algorithm more robust by looking for widgets that are instances of QLineEdit, but there are always risks with hacky approaches like this!

QDoubleSpinBox: Stop emitting intermediate values

I am subclassing QDoubleSpinBox to add some features (like incrementing the value based on the location of the cursor in the lineedit) and to change some features I find annoying. One of the latter is that intermediate values are emitted: e.g. if you want to enter the value 323 it will emit 3 then 32 then finally 323. I'd like to set it to only emit on entry (i.e. only actually change value on entry).
Anyway, I can't figure out how to capture these intermediate edits. I overrode setValue to see if I could stop it there somehow, but it apparently isn't called (or at least my override isn't). I'm not sure how the value is actually getting set while editing in line edit.
More generally, the logic of this box escapes me. Is there some documentation that explains e.g. "if you type a digit into the lineedit then this series of routines is called... while if you hit the up arrow, this series of routines is called?"
In case it matters, I'm using PyQt5
EDIT: Here is another case in which having access to this is important. Say I want to implement an undo/redo structure for the box. The only way I can think of to get access to the changed values is to connect to the valueChanged signal. But if I'm subclassing the box it seems a little convoluted to listen for a signal rather than just watch the value change 'internally' Or am I missing something here?
You could use the following signal:
void QAbstractSpinBox::editingFinished() [signal]
This signal is emitted editing is finished. This happens when the spinbox loses focus and when enter is pressed.
based on the documentation of QAbstractSpinBox:
http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.1/qtwidgets/qabstractspinbox.html#editingFinished
There is nothing that combines the arrow based changes and the editingFinished changes.
My use case was to let the user enter the value without getting the signal on each new digit, while still making ↑, ↓, Page Up, Page Down keys and arrow buttons work as usual, emitting the signal on each activation.
QAbstractSpinBox::editingFinished signal doesn't provide this functionality: it's only ever emitted when focus is lost or Return/Enter is pressed.
What does work exactly as I need is the keyboardTracking property of QAbstractSpinBox. If it's true (the default), the spinbox emits valueChanged on each digit typed. If you set it to false, it behaves exactly as I described in the beginning of this answer.

flex how to refresh already created view

How can I refresh view after a certain event?
I have a view which contains multiple groups. I want to show or hide some groups.
onCreationComplete() or initialize() method works only at the beginning of the view creation.
Try invalidateDisplayList() on the view
Let me know if that doesn't do the trick and we'll try some other tricks.
I personally don't like the answer that says to call invalidateDisplayList (sorry no offense Nate nothing personal). I feel it's too vague and doesn't explain what this does under the hood and furthermore you shouldn't have to call it directly in cases such as the one explained in the OPs question. You can simply create booleans that are bindable for each of the groups you'd like to show/hide then in the event handler set those booleans to the appropriate value and if they are bound to the visible and include in layout properties of the containers those containers will internally call invalidateDisplayList after calling set visible and consequently commitProperties.
This is basically what happens under the hood as I understand it: The way this works is values aren't committed or used to update the display until the next frame this way it doesn't get bogged down doing unnecessary layout calculations. So you update the bindable property which fires an event which triggers a notification in the listener (in this case a function that sets the property on your control), that in turn passes along the value to the control which sets an internal flag to update the property and calls invalidateProperties. When it hits the next frame redraw it sees that the properties flag is dirty (true) and then calls commitProperties, this computes/sets the appropriate values (possibly also invalidating then "fixing" the size using invalidateSize() and measure()) and calls invalidateDisplayList, then during the same frame it sees that the display list flag is dirty so it calls updateDisplayList, here it uses the values of the properties to draw appropriately.
You should also be able to achieve this using states, which add or remove children from the display list based on an array of "actions" for each state.

PyQt (or just QT). How to get QComboBox to fire a signal whenever it is set to a value (even if unchanged)

I am using PyQt4, but this is general enough that it could just apply to QT.
I have a series of QComboBoxes that I fill from left to right (i.e. selecting an item in the leftmost will populate the next one. Selecting an item in that one will populate the next, and so on)
I am having difficulty getting my signals to fire under all situations (i.e. regardless of whether the current index changes or not AND regardless of whether the item is set by the user or set programatically).
More detail:
I rely on the signals of the first QCombox to fire whenever an item is selected so that I can populate the next QCombobox in the gui. I then rely on THAT QCombobox to emit a signal so that I can populate the next one. And so on.
I want to pre-select an item in each QCombobox based on the user's last interaction with the gui.
I have a unique function per QCombobox that is responsible for populating and pre-selecting just that QCombobox. The code looks something like this:
comboBox1.blockSignals(True)
comboBox1.clear()
comboBox1.addItems(sorted(itemList))
comboBox1.blockSignals(False)
comboBox1.setCurrentIndex(intLastSavedState1)
where intLastSavedState1 is an integer that is derived from the text that was last selected by the user the last time they had used the app. I had hoped that the last line of this function would fire a signal that would cause the next combo box's function to load and pre-select an item (comboBox2). And that action would then cause the next comboBox's function to activate and it would cascade to the next and the next. But it is not working across all cases.
I have tried two versions of the signals:
self.connect(comboBox1, QtCore.SIGNAL("currentIndexChanged(const QString&)"), self.load_comboBox2)
and
self.connect(comboBox1, QtCore.SIGNAL("activated(const QString&)"), self.load_comboBox2)
In the first case, the signal will fire only if the intLastSavedState1 is different than whatever is currently selected in the combo box. This causes an issue if the user had last selected item 0 from that list. In this case QT does not recognize my script setting the the current index to 0 as being a change (since after loading the box it appears to think it is already on index 0), and so the signal does not fire.
In the second case, the signal will fire regardless of what is currently selected in the combo box... but only if activated by the user. It will not fire when my script tries to set the current index programatically.
These appear to be my only two options regarding the signals. So... is there another way of pre-selecting items in a QCombobox that will trigger a signal each and every time?
Well... sometimes just the act of asking a question can lead you to a (partial) answer.
I have a work-around but I am still interested in hearing if someone has a better idea.
I am now programatically setting the index of the QCombobox to -1 immediately after loading it up. Then, when I programatically set the actual index based on the user's history, it will always be considered a change (i.e. it will never be -1) and the signal will fire
using: currentIndexChanged(const QString&)
So my code looks like this now:
comboBox1.blockSignals(True)
comboBox1.clear()
comboBox1.addItems(sorted(itemList))
comboBox1.setCurrentIndex(-1)
comboBox1.blockSignals(False)
comboBox1.setCurrentIndex(intLastSavedState1)
and my signal looks like this:
self.connect(comboBox1, QtCore.SIGNAL("currentIndexChanged(const QString&)"), self.load_comboBox2)
This functions... does anyone have a better idea?
Thanks agian.
You can check current Index of your ComboBox and then either call your slot or do call setCurrentIndex().
Example:
if comboBox1.currentIndex() == index:
self.load_comboBox2(index)
else
comboBox1.setCurrentIndex(index)
This way you will not end up calling slot twice.

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