Any tutorial on Qt SOAP - qt

Qt library provides a classes to work with SOAP in qt components. Unfortunately, it's not a part of 'core' Qt and is not well documented. Is it any tutorials / guides/ examples awailable i can use as starting point to learn QtSoap? I want to create a very simple SOAP client for JIRA.

http://doc.qt.nokia.com/solutions/4/qtsoap/google-example.html how about this i think it's a good example
also the documentation for every class is decent eg : http://doc.qt.nokia.com/solutions/4/qtsoap/qtsoapmessage.html#details

Alternatively, use gSOAP. It's the most popular SOAP client library for C++, and has code generation.

Related

Does Qt have general-purpose classes besides GUI-related classes?

I have recently regained some interest in learning Qt, but have the following doubt:
Does Qt have enough classes that are not GUI-related?
For example, Python is "batteries-included", .NET is definitely "batteries-included", and as far as I have seen, Android API also has a lot of classes to design and implement application/domain logic, not directly related to visual presentation.
The main reason I am asking is because I don't know C++ and don't plan to learn it deeply (too much time needed), so if I had to take third party C++ libraries all the time and struggle to use them inside Qt projects that would be a strong point against going ahead.
The intended use is mostly to create small desktop apps for personal use while gaining insight on software design good practices - a profession I am slowly migrating to.
I have already used some Python/Pygtk (without IDE) and WPF (in VStudio/ExpressionBlend). In both platforms, most of my work is related to scientific computations, image processing and interactive scientific visualization, and there are good libraries for that either in Python (Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib, Pandas, PIL, cairo) and .NET(AForge, alglib, System.Media.Media3D). I wonder if the Qt ecosystem is so complete in that regard.
Qt isn't a language in itself, so you can't compare it to Python or .NET. With that being said, Qt does provide general-purpose classes like containers, a Unicode string class, character set encoders/decoders, multimedia, device and file I/O, etc. All these modules are fully documented.
There are also some external modules available for Qt, like Qwt which provides widgets for technical applications.
For other functionality where something Qt-specific isn't available, you can obviously use another appropriate library. Like OpenCV.
Oh, and you can use Qt in Python too, through PyQt.
As far as I know, Qt doesn't have image processing libraries. For that, you'll need to use something like OpenCV. Qt does have libraries for loading most common image types.
However, Qt does extend beyond just GUI classes.
There is a database module that's quite convenient. The concurrency/threading classes are nice. I've enjoyed making use of the Qt Networking classes. The FileIO classes are alright.
These classes/modules are all useful for making platform-independent code. Things like image processing are mostly algorithmic and tend to be platform-independent by nature. So I think they fall out of the scope of the Qt framework. It shouldn't be too difficult, however, to simply find a library that does what you need and link that in to your project.
A lot of the Qt Core services that heltonbiker and Nikos C. mentioned, can be thought of as extensions to C++, a little like std. Although I often prefer the Qt implementations myself. But Qt has gone much further with their libraries, with the I/O, and web services etc...
The QtXML library provides reading and writing of XML files. Traditionally we had always used xerces, but the Qt XML library is almost as simple as .NETs.
The QtNetwork library offers TCP/IP and other networks services
The QtMultimedia library performs playback and recording of audio
and video content to the use of available devices like cameras and
radios.
The QtSQL library interfaces with SQL databases.
And there is much more than that. Although these are probably services that are used to most. The other benefit is that for the most part the implementations are cross platform. So for example using the I/O services does not require you to write separate code for Linux and Windows. That is a general rule, and there are exceptions. But I am sure most people would agree that any of the services they offer are easy to use, and well documented.
Happy coding.
Qt provides ample abstraction besides UI - it comes with a set of functionality enhancing features that come with certain usage paradigms.
Container classes - shallow copy by value, copy on write
Implicit sharing for containers and certain data types
Event driven, signals and slots
A powerful and usable metasystem
Properties
Platform abstraction for a lot of functionality, from file access to network and multithreading
Cross platform atomics (not that important since C++11 atomics)
Settings API
Undo API
OpenGL abstraction (not necessarily UI, custom graphics)
Basic image formats and basic image manipulations
Qt Declarative, a.k.a QtQuick and QML markup (usable for all kind of structure markup BTW)
Dynamic plugin API
Platform abstraction and portability - same code, multiple platforms
High and low level multimedia - audio, video
Sensors and serial port
Unit test
XML, JSON, SQL
An outdated and hopefully soon updated OpenCL abstraction
Last but not least, a lot of 3rd party modules built around Qt fitting a wide range of applications
Honestly, all its missing is support for some more popular formats for file, media encoding/decoding and containers, some parallel and vector abstraction, USB, WIFI/NFC (in the works in an addon module) and it will be 100% versatile.
Note that you can also use Python with Qt, although I have no experience with that, Qt is a very versatile tool that allows for quick and easy application development - and since 5.1 supports pretty much the entire market, with the addition of Android and iOS to the list of supported platforms. It is very useful for creating custom use applications for creative or research purposes.
Although not perfect for every task, Qt is easily the "best of the bunch" of tools you can use in this regard. Unbeatable in terms of portability and very thorough, if not a little bloated for the set of functionality it provides. And finally, it is free, you can even develop commercial applications under LGPL as long as you link dynamically. All in all, it is well worth the investment to learn, the only downside is it lacks uniformity between the old C++ native APIs and the QML runtime, which is actively worked on and is based on JS, so the APIs are a bit different and some glue APIs are required to fuse C++ with JS and QML.
(just for the record, from the official site):
The Foundation: Qt Core Module
The Qt Core module forms the foundation of all Qt-based applications
with core non-graphical classes used by other modules.
Key Functions
File IO, event and object handling
Multi-threading and concurrency
Plugins, setting management
Signals and Slots inter-object communications mechanism
Benefits
Reduce development time and cost by leveraging a complete set of application building blocks
Develop portable code from the ground up with cross-platform functionality

PlayN - Managing Common Code / Native Code

I am thinking about using PlayN to manage "common code" in Java and use PlayN to generate iOS, Android, and HTML native versions of the common code.
I figure I could then use the playn-generated native code and link with actual platform specific code (such as UI).
In other words,
Common Code libs in Java-> PlayN -> Native Commond Code Libs -> Link with Native App
Is the use of Play for the above workflow/pipeline appropriate? Any challenges?
Thank-you...
Firstly, you have to specify what you mean by "native" code for the different platforms.
On Android, your java files are specifically compiled/prepared for dalvik. So they are already "native" of a fashion, no work needed to be done here. If you want to get C/C++ native code for Android using the NDK, you're out of luck. PlayN doesn't do this and this is a hard problem (going from Java to C++)
If you take a look at the Maven modular layout of how PlayN is intended to be used, it isn't difficult to define a Factory interface in the common code and pass in a platform specific implementation for each module. It's no big deal to support Android specific functionality this way.
For the HTML version, you can use HTML libraries no problem using JNI, although really garnering specific functionality of the browser I'd imagined of limited value compared to what PlayN has already exposed. The one thing that is useful is text/keyboard input, although I'd recommend triplePlay https://github.com/threerings/tripleplay UI library as they've solved this, and it's an active project.
As for iOS, this might be more complicated as the iOS module is a bit of a hack where the compiled Java classes are run through an JVM runtime for .net (IKVM) and then uses the Monotouch tools to compile the whole thing to native code for iOS. See https://github.com/samskivert/ikvm-monotouch
So for iOS, you won't be able to bind the code to any form of native version, and what you have access to via the toolchain method depends very much on what Monotouch has catered for iOS (quite a lot I imagine), and also what IKVM-Monotouch has supported (I imagine the bare minimum to get PlayN working).
I'm not familiar enough with the Flash pipeline to give you an appraisal, although I think that it's quite flexible.
The above answer is written assuming your app is actually a game. If it is not and you intend to use the standard widget libraries for various platforms on mass, it should be possible. Choosing a good MVP framework would be good here, and depending on the assumptions it makes on different host environments will determine how easy the whole thing will be.
I'd recommend reading and comparing https://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/articles/mvp-architecture and perhaps look at questions like What is your favorite GWT MVP Framework?
...although a lot of these frameworks might be GWT specific and not really have catered to being reused on other platforms.

Which parts of Windows does Qt rely on?

I believe Qt uses GDI(+) and you start with a QObject. Does it call ActiveX components, COM etc?
For example, putting WebKit in a form is there anything happening there that uses the Windows bits and pieces for painting?
I'm just a beginner trying to work out how much of WINAPI, COM, and ActiveX is used/wrapped by Qt.
In general Qt only implements a feature if there is a sensible(/compatible) metaphor for that feature on all* supported platforms. It makes use of a lot of different Microsoft and non-Microsoft components on Windows, not just the one's you have mentioned.
I've not found a document which summarises what you're asking before because it's not something I've ever needed or found useful as the document would be immense. The way I tend to work with Qt is read the excellent documentation and believe it until I find something which does what I didn't expect it to. Then delve into what it does under the bonnet(/hood) for that specific platform. Remember, the source code is freely available.
* Note: there are some features which are platform specific in the framework but these are usually clearly identified as such.

Using webservice in Qt

I was surfing through various article related to Webservice in Qt , but unfortunatly didn't got what i was looking for. I am using .Net webservice with SOAP, and want to parse this service. Gone through various related article, but the basic problem that i am facing is to get the Soap libraries? Where to download from? And how to integrate? And this will really work for me?
Thank You.
Your best bet is probably integrating gSOAP into your Qt application. (Make sure it's Licensing terms are ok for you.)
A good run-down of how to do the integration is GSoap: SAOP and XML Web services for Qt apps (includes a sample .zip file). That doesn't require a specific version of Qt (since gSOAP is doing all the work essentially), so anything modern-ish should do.
Although it's a very late suggestion, Apache Axis is a free/open source software SOAP stack that appears to fit your needs.

Flex Application Framework -- PureMVC Portability vs. Swiz?

My company is building a Flex application that we may need to port to other platforms:
Silverlight (likely)
Mobile (maybe -- iPhone: Objective-C , Android: Java, etc.)
Desktop (maybe -- AIR, .NET, etc.)
TV sets (maybe eventually)
Currently, I’m looking into application frameworks to build upon and I’m torn between pureMVC and Swiz.
I LOVE swiz for its simplicity and how it just gives you a way to hook things up and then apply your own patterns. From a flex-only perspective, this is my 1st choice.
But, PureMVC is platform-independent and has already been ported over to most of the platforms that are mentioned above. How valuable is this portability? Will it really make our lives significantly easier when it comes to porting and developing/maintaining multiple applications? If so, then it seems like PureMVC is the way to go.
Alternatively, since Silverlight has the most definite business case for porting of our application, maybe we could port Swiz to Silverlight? I'm not too familiar with which AS3 language and Flex framework features Swiz depends on and whether they are available in C#/Silvelright. Would this actually be possible?
Thanks so much!
Karthik
The way I see it, if you used pureMVC you could port to a new language, without too much trouble (other than what the new language will give you) your commands, mediators and proxies, provided you program your mediators to an interface, instead of a concrete component implementation, and the proxies use a services layer to get the data from server. That way you'll only have to implement the components and the service layer in the new language.
A quick look at the Swiz framework:
uses the flash event model (see CentralDispatcher)
uses some flash.net, and mx.rpc classes (see net and rpc swiz packages)
PureMVC framework doesn't use the flash event model, and eventual flash.net/mx.rpc references would normally appear in the service layer. On the other hand Swiz seems to be aimed at taking full advantage of flex, and the mxml format, so it might get the job done faster there. So you might also want to consider using Swiz for flex and PureMVC for the other languages.
Any framework, including Swiz, can very easily be ported to just about any language. Actionscript is touring complete, so theoretically any code writen in actionscript can be transformed into another touring complete language. For example, we use the Swiz framework in our mobile apps, which get cross compiled to run in iOS. There are many other open source cross compilers for a variety of languages, as well as Adobe's Alchemy project.
The only thing that is not easily portable in Swiz the usage of runtime metadata tags. This can be solved by using an advanced search and replace utility, or a custom transformation framework to convert custom metadata tags to their native code implementation. Hopefully we will see some cool new open source tools for this soon, now that Flex 4.5 was released with custom compiler hooks.
In short, I wouldn't even take portability into consideration when deciding on a framework. Choose the one which is most comfortable for you or your developers to use. I personally prefer Swiz myself.
Cheers!

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