forceActiveFocus() vs focus = true in QML - qt

I read the documentation about:
focus property
activeFocus property
forceActiveFocus() method
FocusScope object
and keyboard focus in QtQuick
but it is still not clear when should someone use forceActiveFocus() method over setting the focus property to true or vice versa.

As the documentation states:
For very simple cases simply setting the focus property is sometimes sufficient.
Such a simple case would be, if the Item which gets focus: true is not enclosed by a FocusScope that might have not the focus.
Then it continues with:
> Within each focus scope one object may have Item::focus set to true. If more than one Item has the focus property set, the last type to set the focus will have the focus and the others are unset, similar to when there are no focus scopes.
> When a focus scope receives active focus, the contained type with focus set (if any) also gets the active focus. If this type is also a FocusScope, the proxying behavior continues. Both the focus scope and the sub-focused item will have the activeFocus property set.
From where we learn, about the fact that setting focus: true is not sufficient, if it is for an Item that is a successor to a FocusScope as this FocusScope would need to have activeFocus su that the successor Item will receive activeFocus. This is recursive, and means, that the FocusScope will need to have focus: true and a possible predecessor FocusScope needs the activeFocus and so on. Which results in some kind of focus tree
This focus tree consists out of inner nodes that are the FocusScopes and leafs that are Items. A FocusScope might be a leaf as well, but I don't know why it should.
In this tree, each FocusScope may have up to one child node (either Item (leaf) or FocusScope (inner node) that has focus === true. Traversing this tree, following the path where all traversed nodes have focus === true the traversed nodes have also activeFocus === true. As each FocusScope may have only up to one child node with focus === true there is only one such path.
Column {
FocusScope {
focus: false
width: 100
height: 100
Text {
focus: true
text: 'has focus ' + focus + '\nhas activeFocus ' + activeFocus
}
}
FocusScope {
focus: true
width: 100
height: 100
Text {
focus: true
text: 'has focus ' + focus + '\nhas activeFocus ' + activeFocus
}
}
}
Here we have two FocusScopes. Both have a child that has focus, but as only the second FocusScope has the focus itself, it's child has activeFocus.
The use of forceActiveFocus() traverses the focus tree, and sets focus to true for each node on the way, so the Item has activeFocus at the end.

Related

Stackview Push and Pop destroys and creates a new page

I have many pages and when a button is clicked I make transitions between these pages with a StackView, push and pop. And in these pages when corresponding buttons are clicked I make these buttons red. However, when I pop and re-opened the same page with a push, button is no longer red. So that makes me think that pop and push destroys and creates a new page which is the opposite what is written in docs:
This means that any item pushed onto a StackView will never be
destroyed by the StackView; only items that StackView creates from
Components or URLs are destroyed by the StackView.
Here is the code for stackview:
Window{
id:main
property bool isAbsOffRoad: false
StackView{
id:contentFrame
initialItem:Qt.resolvedUrl("qrc:/MainPage.qml")
Connections{
target:contentFrame.currentItem
onBackButtonPressed:{
contentFrame.pop() }
}}
And then here is how I push:
Item {
id:backgroundItem
LeftButtons{
id:buttonSettings
MultiPointTouchArea{
onPressed{
contentFrame.push("qrc:/SettingsPage.qml")}
}}
I cannot see a reason why the page doesn't preserves it's state when popped and pushed back. What might be the reason?
Another question is: I get a
QML Connections: Cannot assign to non-existent property
"onBackButtonPressed".
However, back buttons work. Why I get that error?
The documentation you quote gives you the answer.
This means that any item pushed onto a StackView will never be destroyed by the StackView; only items that StackView creates from Components ->or URLs<- are destroyed by the StackView.
If a StackView creates an item from a URL, it will have ownership of it, and therefore feel free to destroy it.
Your code shows this:
initialItem:Qt.resolvedUrl("qrc:/MainPage.qml")
So you're giving the StackView a URL to your QML. If you don't want it to do that, try doing something like this instead:
initialItem: MainPage {}
That way, the StackView will be given a fully constructed item, and it won't try to destroy it.
For your second question, I'm guessing that your MainPage.qml does not define that signal. You could create that signal in MainPage just to remove the warning, or you can try adding the ignoreUnknownSignals property to your Connections object.
UPDATE:
You can still use push and pop. You just have to provide a created instance of your item, not just the item type. You could try something like this, for example:
component SomePage: Rectangle {
signal clicked()
MouseArea {
anchors.fill: parent
onClicked: parent.clicked()
}
Component.onCompleted: {
console.log("Created: " + color);
}
Component.onDestruction: {
console.log("Destroyed: " + color);
}
}
SomePage {
id: bluePage
color: "blue"
visible: false
onClicked: contentFrame.push(redPage)
}
SomePage {
id: redPage
color: "red"
visible: false
onClicked: contentFrame.pop();
}
StackView {
id: contentFrame
anchors.fill: parent
initialItem: bluePage
}

Stackview calling slots for previous screen

I am implementing stackview in my application.
SwipeView {
id: swipeView
anchors.fill: parent
currentIndex: showfooter.currentIndex
DashboardListView{
id:dashboard
}
Settings{
id:setting
}
Cart{
id:cart
}
}
StackView {
id: stackView
initialItem: Pane {
id: pane
}
}
When i am loading some other screen(like SightDescription.qml) from DashboardListView using push method and cliking somewhere on that screen its calling slots for DashboardListView. DashboardListView Screen controls are getting onclick signal. Is there any setting related to stack view that I need to do, I read stackview's documentation but did not find anything to restrict this behavior.
It seems like the Pane is usually intercepting the mouse events, so the lower Items cannot receive them.
When you push the new item on the StackView the Pane becomes visible: false and therefore does not care for input anymore. If the new Item does not handle the mouse events, they will propagate to the lower Item.
To prevent that, you have various options:
Make sure that all Items pushed on the StackView will handle mouse events, e.g. by making a Pane or a MouseArea the root item.
Place a MouseArea directly below the StackView that is only enabled when there are Items on the StackView
Some more... e.g. installing EventFilters in C++ e.t.c. but I think 1 and 2 should be suffice and be easy to implement.

Catching mouse events from QML

I want to create a QML item which disappears when the mouse moves outside of it. Here is my code:
Item {
id: disappearing_element
ListView { ... }
MouseArea {
id: collapser
anchors.fill: parent
propagateComposedEvents: true
hoverEnabled: true
onExited: {
disappearing_element.visible = false
}
}
}
It works well, but MouseArea propagates events like onClicked() onDoubleClicked() only (as said in Qt docs).
Is there a way to notify disappearing_element's childrens about mouse enter and mouse exit events (without using a Popup element)?
I think this is one of the common needs when developing QtQuick apps. One solution we currently use quite often is to add MouseArea in each of the children that need check mouse containment, and emit signals (and catch these signals in your main item) when the mouse enters or exits.
Things go a bit complicated when the children items also need such mechanism to manage their children. However, for common usage, this approach is enough for us right now.

Can I select text by mouse from a number of delegates in QML?

Lets imaging project for desktop which contains only one QML file:
import QtQuick 2.4
import QtQuick.Window 2.2
Window {
visible: true
width: 500
height: 500
ListModel {
id: myModel
ListElement {
color: "red"
text: "some interesting information"
}
ListElement {
color: "blue"
text: "not so interesting information"
}
ListElement {
color: "green"
text: "and some more information"
}
}
ListView {
anchors.fill: parent
interactive: false
model: myModel
delegate: Rectangle {
width: parent.width
height: 30
color: model.color
TextEdit {
anchors.centerIn: parent
text: model.text
selectByMouse: true
}
}
}
}
With the selectByMouse property of TextEdit set to true I can select text in it. But how can I select text in multiple delegates at the same time? In multiple TextEdits? Is it even possible?
Since the other answers seem incomplete or don't answer what I believe VALOD9 was asking: "can you select text across multiple delegates as though their TextEdits are one element?"
This is not inherently possible, but can be crafted in QML with a lot of manual tracking of mouse presses and movement.
It could be accomplished by placing MouseArea over your ListView and delegates that each contain DropAreas. To track your text selection clicks/drags across your delegates, you could use an invisible MouseArea.drag.target that triggers the delegate DropAreas' onEntered and onPositionChanged events. Based on all this data, you can use TextEdit.positionAt() with your mouse coordinate results to get where your selections start and end, and use TextEdit.select() to programmatically select the text in each delegate. Since you are programmatically selecting text, your TextEdits would need to have selectByMouse: false.
You will need to store any necessary selection data in your model since you shouldn't store state in delegates in case they are removed from the ListView from automatic caching. You would then use this data to recreate the selection when they are re-loaded from cache using Component.OnCompleted. To do selection operations like copy, you could iterate over your model and pick up the saved selection data (especially if you save the selected text to the model using TextEdit.selectedText).
This would allow many TextEdit-based delegates to act as though they are one when selecting text across any of them.
You can set persistentSelection to true and each of your TextEdit will keep the text selected (http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qml-qtquick-textedit.html#persistentSelection-prop)

QML several items with active focus / keyboard shortcut control

I'm trying to implement a keyboard shortcut control for my qml application. I know there's the possibility to do that with an Action element, but I don't want menus and toolbars which are then mandatory to use.
That's why I'm approaching this topic with keyboard events. For this, I need to have the element performing the action to be in focus. But my goal is a global shortcut control, so theoratically I'd need to have all the elements in question in focus.
I found the FocusScope type in the documentation, but I'm not sure if this is what I need.
Does it mean that the focus of nested FocusScopes 'slides' through to the last element that's not a FocusScope and acquiring focus manually with focus: true thus only this last element holding focus? Or do all the elements on the way down the slide that acquire focus have the activeFocus property set?
Is this the right approach or would I need something else?
Focus in Qt Quick is a mess in my opinion. It always confuses me and I end up hacking around it with forceActiveFocus(). I'd recommend the new Shortcut type:
Shortcut {
sequence: StandardKey.Quit
context: Qt.ApplicationShortcut
onActivated: Qt.quit()
}
With the context property, you can choose whether you want the shortcut to apply to the current window or the entire application.
The motivation for this type can be seen in the comments of patch set 5:
Shortcut aims to supersede Action. I want to kill the latter in the future because...
compare the actual user code: http://cutebin.fi/prwznhkbo
look at the amount of "action" related expressions all around BasicButton.qml
IMHO the whole concept doesn't quite fit mobile/embedded or QML
Action was a frequently requested feature. Now that they have it, the frequent questions are "how to use a different icon/text" or "how to know the source that triggered an action". Both are contradicting the sole purpose of Action, and neither "problem" would exist if they just wrote simpler QML code in the first place, as illustrated by the example snippet. :)
Evidently the most usable part of Action is the shortcut feature. Those who need shortcuts are not happy that they need to use Action, because "what's up with all this other stuff, I just want a shortcut".
Maybe there are different ways of achieving this, but the way I know is the following one.
The idea is to have an Item which controls the key events you need to handle.
I'll explain myself with an example. As you will see, if we have input widgets (i.e. TextInput) we have to implement a mechanism to return the input to our Item in order to process again the keyboard events. In this example, the Qt.Key_Escape key will be used to set the focus back.
import QtQuick 2.4
import QtQuick.Controls 1.3
ApplicationWindow {
id: mainwindow
title: qsTr("Hello")
width: 640
height: 480
visible: true
Item {
anchors.fill: parent
focus: true
Keys.onPressed: {
if ( (event.key === Qt.Key_Q) && (event.modifiers & Qt.ShiftModifier) ) {
rect.blue()
} else if ( (event.key === Qt.Key_W) && (event.modifiers & Qt.AltModifier) ) {
rect.red()
} else if ( (event.key === Qt.Key_E) && (event.modifiers & Qt.AltModifier) ) {
text.text = 'Key Alt+E was pressed'
}
}
Rectangle{
id: rect
width: 100
height: 100
color: "black"
function blue() {color = "blue"}
function red() {color = "red"}
}
Text {
id: text
anchors.centerIn: parent
font.pointSize: 20
}
TextInput {
id: textinput
anchors.top: text.bottom
text: "sample text"
Keys.onPressed: {
if (event.key === Qt.Key_Escape) {
console.log('Key Escape was pressed');
parent.focus = true;
}
}
}
}
}
Edit #1: #Mitch suggested to use the Shortcut QML Type. If you can use it (it's available since Qt 5.5), the code will be slightly different. Anyway, you need also to set the focus to the main app in some cases depending on the shortcut sequences implemented. For example, if we're typing text, Shift+Q doesn't have effect in this example. We need to press Escape first.
import QtQuick 2.5
import QtQuick.Controls 1.3
ApplicationWindow {
id: mainwindow
title: qsTr("Hello")
width: 640
height: 480
visible: true
Shortcut {
sequence: "Shift+Q"
onActivated: rect.blue()
context: Qt.ApplicationShortcut
}
Shortcut {
sequence: "Alt+W"
onActivated: rect.red()
context: Qt.ApplicationShortcut
}
Shortcut {
sequence: "Alt+E"
onActivated: text.text = 'Key Alt+E was pressed'
context: Qt.ApplicationShortcut
}
Item {
anchors.fill: parent
Rectangle{
id: rect
width: 100
height: 100
color: "black"
function blue() {color = "blue"}
function red() {color = "red"}
}
Text {
id: text
anchors.centerIn: parent
font.pointSize: 20
}
TextInput {
id: textinput
anchors.top: text.bottom
text: "sample text"
Keys.onPressed: {
if (event.key === Qt.Key_Escape) {
console.log('Key Escape was pressed');
parent.focus = true;
}
}
}
}
}
Much like Mitch, I found focus to be a mess in QML, much like many other aspects of it.
I ended up implementing my own "active focus / selection" scheme. Basically I keep a list of item pointers as my "active selection", I have the keyboard focus fixed at a single item acting as an event dispatcher, and it redirects keyboard events to all items in the active selection list. I still use QML's MouseArea to manage the selected items.

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