Building TabBar in QML - Loader doesn't show all the Rectangles - qt

Question

import QtQuick 2.4
import QtQuick.Window 2.2
Window
{
visible: true
height: 500
width: 500
property VisualItemModel contentToBeShownOnTabClick : visualItemModelDemo
property variant tabLabels : ["Navigation", "Payload", "System Control"]
VisualItemModel
{
id: visualItemModelDemo
Rectangle
{
id: navigationTab
color: "green"
height: 200
width: 200
}
Rectangle
{
id: navigationTab1
color: "darkgreen"
height: 200
width: 200
}
Rectangle
{
id: navigationTab2
color: "lightgreen"
height: 200
width: 200
}
}
MainForm
{
Component
{
id: tabsOnBottomComponent
Repeater
{
model: tabLabels
// The Tabs
Rectangle
{
id: tabsOnBottom
// This anchoring places the tabs on the outer top of the parent rectangle.
anchors.top: parent.bottom
anchors.topMargin: 180
color: "lightsteelblue"
border.color: "steelblue"
border.width: 2
implicitWidth: Math.max ((labelTabsBottom.width + 4), 80)
implicitHeight: 20
radius: 2
// Tabs Text/Label
Text
{
id: labelTabsBottom
anchors.centerIn: parent
color: "white"
rotation: 0
// With reference to mode: tabLabels
text: modelData
font.pointSize: 11
}
MouseArea
{
anchors.fill: parent
onClicked: bottomTabClicked (index);
}
}
}
}
Rectangle
{
// The things which get displayed on clicking of a tab will be shown in this rectangle.
id: areaForTabContents
border.color: "black"
border.width: 10
height: parent.height
width : parent.width
color : "pink"
// These are the tabs displayed in one row - horizontally.
Row
{
id: horizontalTabs
Loader
{
anchors.fill: parent
sourceComponent: tabsOnBottomComponent
}
}
}
anchors.fill: parent
}
}
This gets shown as follows:
whereas I want it to see 3 rectangles there side by side.

Answer 1

Loader is not a transparent type w.r.t. the containing type, Row in this case. I think this is an issue related to creation context and the way Repeater works. From the documentation of the latter:
Items instantiated by the Repeater are inserted, in order, as children of the Repeater's parent. The insertion starts immediately after the Repeater's position in its parent stacking list. This allows a Repeater to be used inside a layout.
The Rectangles are indeed added to the parent which is the Loader, they stack up - Loader does not provide a positioning policy - then they are added to the Row resulting in just one Item (the last one) to be visible.
You can tackle the problem with few different approaches, depending on the properties you want to maintain or not. I would get rid of anchoring in the Component and move it to the containing Row. A too specific anchoring inside a Component could be a pain in the neck when it is instanced and used all over a (not so small) project.
As a first approach you can re-parent the Repeater to the Row, i.e. you can rewrite code as:
Row
{
id: horizontalTabs
Loader
{
sourceComponent: tabsOnBottomComponent
onLoaded: item.parent = horizontalTabs
}
}
However this would result in warnings due to the Component anchoring references not working as expected any more.
If you still want to maintain the anchoring, as defined in the Component, and off-load the creation, you can go for the dynamic way (if the semantics fits in your use case), i.e. you can use createObject. This way you totally avoid the Loader and the related issue. For instance, you can create the Repeater once the Row has completed its creation:
Row
{
id: horizontalTabs
Component.onCompleted: tabsOnBottomComponent.createObject(horizontalTabs)
}
Clearly, the creation code can be move anywhere else, depending on your needs.