QWidget stays within parent QWidget - qt

i'm quite new to Qt and i've a question.
I've got an application with multiple windows/QFrame. I'd like them to only exist within the mainwindow (it's also the parent gadget). When I move them, I want the to stay within the parent gadget.
Is is possible ?
If yes, how ?
I've been through the Qt doc and i've found nothing. I though maybe a simple option can do that. Or do I have to create a new Widget with customs mouse Event methods ?
Thx

If you want a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) GUI you can use the QMdiArea and QMdiSubWindow classes to implement this. Have a look at the detailed description section of QMdiArea for using it with a QMainWindow example, but it also works on any other widget as well.

Related

qt qwidgets that I create programmatically (such as Labels) never show, but ones that I create with the IDE work fine. I'm new to qt

I'm new to QT. when I create a qwidget such as a qlabel, programmatically, it never shows in my main window or anywhere else. But when I create one using the IDE it works fine. What am I missing ?
By default, widgets are set to invisible, therefore, you need to call .show() to make a widget visible. For example,
QLabel *label = new QLabel("click");
label->show();
Using the debugger I noticed that my QLabel had the wrong parent. Setting the parent correctly cured all of my problems. The other answers to my question were relevant too.

Is is possible to edit an individual Widget in the QtDesginer?

I got a external library, which includes a derived class from QGLWidget, very similar to that one here. In that library I have a class:
class PictureGLWidget : public QGLWidget { //.. }
This extends Qt's native QGLWidget and personalizes it. But it was not written by me, I just got it, via a *.dll. So then, I bind that Widget manually in my code to a layout like:
QGridLayout* layout = new QGridLayout;
layout->addWidget(myPictureGLWidget, 0, 1);
ui->verticalLayout_5->addLayout(layout);
since I designed my MainWindowWidget with the integrated QtDesigner, which is by the way very comfortable, I would like to handle my myPictureGLWidget also in the QtDesigner, since I am currently redesigning the MainWindow.
Is there a way doing that? Thnx in advance!
Qt Designer supports any foreign widget class without needing to provide plugins for that. You only have to accept that the widget's properties and appearance won't be available within Designer.
Insert a dummy QWidget into the layout.
Right click on the widget, select "Promote to...".
Add PictureGLWidget as a new class promoted from QWidget. Specify appropriate header files etc.
Promote your widget to PictureGLWidget.
When this is done, the code generated by uic will instantiate a PictureGLWidget where you need it, instead of a dummy QWidget.
If you want to use the PictureGLWidget in the designer instead of a dummy widget, you can write a designer plugin that wraps the widget and exposes it in the widget pallette, provides property support, etc.
I might have misunderstood your question but don't you just add a QGLWidget to your design in Designer. Right click the widget and select Promote to... ?

Qt Designer dock widgets children acess

I made a form using the Qt Designer which has some dockwidgets, these dockwidgets have some children widgets. How I can access the dockwidget and these child widgets in my mainwindow.cpp?
I highly recommend reading the docs for these kinds of things, but to give you a little head start, QDockWidget inherits from QWidget, which inherits from QObject:
https://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/qobject.html#children
widget->children() would simply tell you the children of this widget. This would be needed if you didn't already know the names of the objects to be accessed directly, or had no reference to them.
Update
When you create objects in Qt Designer, and you run the setupUi(this) that is generated for you, inside of your MainWindow, you will then have access to all of the widgets you had set up as members. You can access them directly as they were named in Qt Designer. Please check out one of the numerous tutorials on getting started with Qt. Here is one that shows you how to make use of your ui file, and access the members from it: http://sector.ynet.sk/qt4-tutorial/my-first-qt-gui-application.html
You can also get a list of all the dockWidgets from the mainwindow with
QList<QDockWidget *> dockWidgets = findChildren<QDockWidget *>();
A similar technique works for getting toolbars etc. so you don't have to manually store a list as you create them

Customize QListWidgetItem

I am creating my first app in QT and wanted to design a list. The listitem has two texts and one icon.
The problem is, i cant find any example or helping material, Only helping link i found is : Customize QListWidgetItem but i dont understand it. Although i have the same problem which this links points to...
What i understand is, i have two options:
1- Customize QListWidgetItem to use with QListWidget
2- Make some delegate to use with QListView
I was hoping to get started with option 1. Now in the link, some reply talks about "myItem" which is taking 2 texts as input. I want to know the implementation of "myItem".
In the link you posted, MyItem is just a normal QWidget. This means that you can create a widget in Qt Designer and then set that new widget you created as the widget that the QListWidgetItem should use for display. In the above example, MyItem takes two strings because there is a vertical layout with two labels in it (that's my assumption at least).
You should also note, and is discussed in the above link, that taking the approach of setting an item widget to use for every item in the list is an expensive thing to do in terms of performance and memory consumption. Because a QListWidget is a QListView, you can set an item delegate on it just like any other view and come out with a lighter weight solution (one instantiation of class vs. one instantiation for every item in your list)

how can I have more than a UI for a QMainWindow?

I would like to have a QMainWindow that can change it's look at runtime, i.e when a user clicks a button. Besides keeping references to different UI classes generated by the QtDesigner, is there another way of doing that? Maybe by storing each UI in a layout ? What do you think ?
How much of the main window do you want to change? You could use a QStackWidget any place you want to change things, and change the shown page of the widget when the button is pressed. This will be quick to change, but for large or complicated UIs it may be slightly slower at startup, since it will be creating the widgets for both UIs at the same time. (There are fairly easy ways to change this, also, but they do add complications to something that could be straightforward for most people.) Also, if both layouts should have the same data, just in different places, you have the additional overhead of keeping both sets of UIs up to date while the program is running.
I think I got it now.
You have a QMainWindow and when a certain event is triggered you want to change the appearance of that particular window, like remove some buttons, add a treeview widget or what not.
Well the straight forward approach would be to do it manually, remove some widgets and add new ones using regular C++ code. This can be abit hard if you're used to Qt Designer.
The other way I can think of is using Qt Designer to generate the code for the other appearances and copy it to a special function. The code generated by Qt Designer is usually in a header file called "ui_classname.h" and isn't hard to understand. You will however need to remove some of it as not all would be necessary.
Also, instead of copying the generated code from Qt Designer you could just call it. Usually your widget has a pointer to the generated class and in your widget's constructor you see something like this:
MyWindow::MyWindow(QWidget *parent) : QMainWindow(parent), m_ui(new Ui::MyWindow)
{
m_ui->setupUi(this);
}
and in the corresponding header file:
class MyWindow : public QMainWindow {
...
private:
Ui::MyWindow *m_ui;
};
You could add the additional generated classes for the other appearances and use them when your event triggers.
It might look like this:
class MyWindow : public QMainWindow {
...
private:
void changeAppearance(int id);
Ui::MyWindow *m_ui;
Ui::MyWindowFirstAppearance *m_uiFirst;
Ui::MyWindowSecondAppearance *m_uiSecond;
...
};
void MyWindow::changeAppearance(int id)
{
// some code to remove the current appearance, basically the opposite of what setupUi is doing
if (id == 0)
m_ui->setupUi(this);
else...
m_uiFirst->setupUi(this);
...
}
This has the benefit of using the generated classes directly, so every change you do in Qt Designer doesn't require a change to your main window. The problem is I'm not sure if it's legal to call setupUi more than once and in a place other than your widget's constructor, so you'll have to check that (by looking at what's happening in the setupUi function).
You can dynamically load UI layouts at runtime. Check Qt documentation for QUiLoader class.
This also enables you to upgrade UI layouts without modifying a single line of code.
What I do is to design two UIs under two different QFrames, put the two QFrames in a layout together in the QMainWindow, and then hide() and show() the correct QFrame that you want...
You can use a QTabWidget and hide its buttons. You can then design each GUI in a separate window of the tabWidget. It has the advantage over hiding frames that you won't clutter up your Qt Creator window.
If I'm getting this right, I think you might want to take a loot at style sheets. It allows you to have "skins" for your widgets, much like CSS.
If I didn't get this right, and what you're trying to do is generate .ui files on the fly and create widgets with those using QUiLoader, then you're probably going at this the wrong way since I can't think of a good reason a regular application would need that.

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