I have a class/ QDialog (let's call it "Frame") that contains other classes. This is what it looks like:
In the above screenshot, everything inside the green rectangle is actually a separate class/custom QWidget (let's call it "Page3" since it is the third item in the list) placed inside a QStackedWidget while everything outside the rectangle is part of Frame. Everything inside the rectangle is therefore separate from Frame even though it appears to be part of the same form. Clicking the Overview and SQLite Journal objects causes a separate page to load inside the QStackedWidget. All of these classes must be able to communicate with each other.
The problem is, I’m not sure how to access Frame's public methods or variables from inside Page3. See, one of the functions of Page3 is to unlock the OK button in Frame when the contents of the two password fields (Password & Repeat) match. To do this, Page3 needs to call the method that unlocks the buttons in Frame. I need to communicate with the currently-running instance of Frame instead of creating a new copy so instantiating Frame from inside Page3 doesn't work. I can't use parent() either because that simply refers to the QStackedWidget inside Frame instead of Frame itself.
I'd appreciate it if someone could tell me how to do this.
I prefer to do this kind of thing (communication between a child widget and its parent) using signals and slots. Why? Because if the child depends explicitly on the parent, you end up with a circular dependency, and it's harder to change your design in the future.
The simplest solution is to have Page3 emit an "unlockOk" signal which is connected to a slot in Frame which does the actual "unlocking" of the button. Frame could connect the signal and slot in its constructor, or wherever else it's actually instantiating the Page3 object.
If you want to take it a step further, you could make the signals more generic; for example, signals called "inputValid" (which would be emitted when the password fields match) and "inputInvalid", which would be connected to "unlockOk" and "lockOk" slots. The reason for doing this is that you could re-use the signals in other parts of your application if you need to, and their names clearly indicate what they're communicating.
Related
How do I make it so the TreeView is populated with ProgressIndicators while stuff is happening, but without blocking the thread, using a cell factory?
How does TreeItem.setGraphic() differ from TreeCell.setGraphic()?
When I instantiate the TreeItem, I need to set the graphic to a ProgressIndicator, but I'm not sure whether this ought to happen while creating the TreeItem or from the TreeCell.updateItem dumped out by the factory.
I think when using cell factories, all graphical stuff needs to happen there, thus TreeItem.setGraphic is merely a convenience, and I should figure out my problem from within updateItem.
I'm doing the file explorer example. Each item in the TreeView has the value set to a sun.nio.fs.WindowsPath, and is implemented by inheriting from TreeItem. I override isLeaf() and getChildren(). The problem is isLeaf() can take a long time on network drives when I'm not plugged into the network.
So this is what I'm doing to create a new tree item with a path value (not using cell factory yet):
Start new thread (using Clojure futures) to check if the path value is a path or file using isRegularFile(). The result from this is available later when dereferencing the future.
Instantiate instance of anonymous TreeItem derivative (using Clojure proxy).
Call setGraphic() on the new TreeItem instance with a ProgressIndicator().
Start another thread which checks the result of the first thread. When the first thread is finished, then based on the value of the leaf function, the first thread sets the appropriate file or folder icon, and calls addEventHandler() with local anonymous functions that change the graphic based on expanded or collapsed.
Return the new instance of TreeItem (from step 2) before either of the new threads is finished.
This works and has the effect of putting a swirly graphic at each network drive while isLeaf is running. But I'm not sure how to do all this when both TreeItem and TreeCell seem to have a setGraphic() function; I'm not sure who "owns" what. I think the TreeView owns the both the items and the cells, and calling setGraphic() on a TreeItem somehow references the default cell's graphic, when not using a custom cell factory.
I need to figure out how to access the isLeaf value from the cell factory updateItem(), etc. etc.
I may have worked myself into a corner but this sounded to me like a good idea at the time.
I have been developing an interface that permits a user to modify settings of a robotic device, i.e. speed, directions, force, etc. with a very large series of options in the form of ComboBoxes. The problem is that there are about a thousand of these things, in sub categories. e.g. Speed category x1, x2, x3, Y1, y2, etc. So rather than create a thousand comboboxes in QT, I thought the good idea was to create one set of 50 (ish) and then provide a few button to switch between categories. So when the user selects speed QT, populates the comboboxes with the appropriate options, sets the style sheets and text for the labels etc. So it appears as though a dedicated page exists. Then if the user selects Direction, QT Writes the current index of each box to a dedicated array and then repopulates the boxes, labels etc with the appropriate content. I then do this over and over for the various needs of the system.
All of that seems to work fine. However I am now in a bind where the options provided to navigate to each page have grown. For instance I have forward / backward buttons (like you woudl expect in a set-up wizard), as well as action menus at the top to jump to a page. So now the code is becoming very repetitious. If you select the next button, I write the current values to array, then repopulate. If you jump to the page from anywhere, I look to see where I am, write it to array, and populate the boxes. Thus if I need to change anything I have to make the change in numerous places in the code.
I know that this is not optimal. What I woudl like to do is run a continuous loop as I woudl normally do with Micros in C. So the program can look at a variable in each pass and if it is then it does. I am not however skilled enough to figure this loop out in QT. So my new thought was...
Is it possible to trigger an action or slot with a variable. For example, if the user presses the Next button it triggers a slot for a button that does not exist, so that QT will execute a particular line of Code? Then I can have 1 dedicated section focused on reading and writing boxes, with a bunch of actions that will take me there.
You can make a signal that is triggered with an emit call in your code, so you'd hook up the next button signal of clicked to a slot that does some work and moves on, or directly calls another signal that you've created that triggers a slot elsewhere, or do some work in a lambda triggered by the button press.
I would first load all the ComboBoxes options in a QStringList array (or maybe an array of QList<QLatin1String> lists - for memory saving and code efficiency).
Then I would keep an array of a 1000 integers for current ComboBox indexes.
When the user changes a value in some ComboBox, the currentIndexChanged signal will trigger the corresponding slot (a single slot for all the ComboBoxes would be enough - sender()->objectName() to get the name of the ComboBox which had sent the signal):
void WindowWidget::on_ComboBox_currentIndexChanged(int index)
{
name = sender()->objectName();
/* here change the corresponding integer in the current
indexes array */
}
On Next/Back button push repopulate the ComboBoxes. Also, provide some 'Save' button for saving the ComboBoxes indexes (or trigger the Save slot on some action, i.e. on window close either even on a timer signal).
There is a dictionary taken from JSON file, that is represented by QTreeView QStandardItemModel.
A user can reorganize QTreeView(add, delete, drag-n-drop) and rename items.
The goal is: call function that reads changed QTreeView, makes the dictionary and writes it to initial JSON file.
I can do it by pressing a QPushButton after changes occurred or by binding that function to every change e.g. call function when an item is deleted, call function when an item is added, call a function when an item is renamed and so on.
Is there any way to call a function if any of changes occur? Is there such a signal that corresponds to all of the mentioned changes?
The rowsMoved and itemChanged signals do what you think they do. See http://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/qstandarditemmodel.html
As #vahancho suggests in the comments, you should connect to the layoutChanged signal. All models should emit this immedaitely after making any changes which could affect the view. So this will include sorting and filtering, as well as re-ordering, editing, deleting, etc.
The dataChanged signal is similar, but only really useful if you want to monitor specific items.
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!
I'm implementing a Model/View for a tree like structure, and I've decided to try the QStandardItemModel on which I want to wrap on it a specific class, (which I call here "appSpecificClass").
Basically, I want part of that class (like names, or some data), to be shown in the model, and when I change the model (in edit role, or drag and drop), I want that to have consequences on the appSpecificClass (which is, when I change a name that is showing on the model, the name on the object associated with the model's item of the appSpecificClass also changes).
So, I started from subclassing the QStandardItem by a appSpecificItem, which only has a pointer to the appSpecificClass. When I construct the appSpecificItem, the text and icons are called from appSpecificClass and everything works fine.
However, when change data from appSpecificItem, naturally it does not change the appSpecificClass, because so far I didn't found any way of interacting with the appSpecificItem's pointer via overloading a virtual function (or else)
Does anyone knows how to do this/if this is possible? What can I do such that if for instance the signal
QStandardItemModel::itemChanged ( QStandardItem * item )
is emitted, I can change a the appSpecificItem's pointer.
If not, is there any good tutorial about implementing a Model from scratch? I've tried myself some, but it is not an easy task. Ideally I would like a QStandardItemModel like model, but a little more abstraction on it (such that I can put my appSpecificClass on it).