Keep widget on top in Qt - qt

I'm creating an application which has a "floating" widget which can be dragged around inside the application window. But it starts up, or tends to go behind other widgets sometimes. Is there any way to make sure that the widget in my application stays on top of all other widgets whenever it is made visible?
Thanks.

Use the flag Qt::WindowStaysOnTopHint for your QWidget. This will force your widget to stay on top of all other windows

You can call raise() on your widget to make it appear in front of all other child widgets of the parent it is in. If I read your question correctly, this is the behavior you want. However, any child you create and add to a parent widget will automatically be placed above that widget, so you may need to reraise the widget after additions, or you may want to consider an alternate way of managing the parent/child relationship.

Related

How can I design a second widget with the QT-designer, when i have allready a widget at that position?

I want to make a gui with QT-creator 4.9.1. Designer. My window has 5 widgets, one of these widgets must be change his visibility everytime when the user select a other menu. For that i have made a widget namded workingarea inside my window and inside the workingarea-widget i have a second widget named workingplace0001. My problem is now, that i don't know how can i create the second widget, because i can't change the visibility from the workingplace0001 widget to false. Is there any possibility to change the visibility so i can create the workinplace0002 at that place or can't i use the Designer for that?
I must create 69 workingplaces
You can use QStackedWidget. Just place it in on your main widget, then add number of pages you need, and then place every workingplace on every page of QStackedWidget. For changing current workingplace just change active page of QStackedWidget

Qt hide QLayout (switch between two layouts)

I didn't find solution for my problem with two QLayouts. I need app with QHBoxLayout with possible expandind when I will add new widgets, push buttons, ....
So what I have: One QDialog and two layouts. Now I know that I can't hide the layout.
So I tray just :
layout()->removeItem(firstlayout);
layout()->addLayout(secondLayout);
But when I did this, I saw all items in first layout on possition [0,0].
So next step I try:
for (all items in first layout) if (widget) widget->hide();
But this is working only with QWidget and I have many different items in layouts.
Simply way is use the widget, because there is possible to use hide/show, but I need auto expanding window when I add new items.
Just rebuild the layout, there is no need to keep the two layouts in existence at the same time. Probably clearest is to have two (or more) methods, which first delete current layout, then create new layout, add widgets to it, hide all widgets you want hidden, and set it as current layout. Note that you don't even need to keep a member variable for the layout, since QWidget has that anyway and provides you with setter and getter.
Or, if you have different widgets in different layouts, and actually want to be able "switch pages" so to say, simply use QStackedWidget. Or if you have a fixed part (buttons etc), and then part with "pages", then put the "pages" into QStackedWidget, and keep fixed part out of it.
'addLayout(secondLayout/firstLayout) ' will remove the other layout automatically, you do not have to remove it. If you keep a pointer to the layout(which has addWidget() before), you can simply use the layout and widgets in it later. :)

Qt Parent child relationship for independent qmainwindows

Using Pyside, but a general Qt question:
I am building a Qt app with a controlling QMainWindow. From this window the user can open other QMainWindows (or QDialogs) and from some of those she can open more. The user is intended to think of the first QMainWindow as "the app" and the others as lots of different views on more or less the same data.
So I'd like all the windows to be independently stackable so the user can set up the screen to their own requirements. In particular I want the user to be able to bring the first QMainWindow on top if wanted. But I don't really want each window to have its own task bar entry (though I can live with that). Also I would like them to minimise and restore together, and I would like them all to close when the first main window closes.
If I parent them all on the first mainwindow it works nicely except they stay on top of it which is not what I want.
Instead I have it kind of working by making them all independent with parent = None. Then I register them all with the main window and close them all when it closes. But this makes them a bit too independent - they minimise separately and have their own task bar entry.
Am I missing some obvious fix to this? Is there any easy way (a flag?) to stop the children staying on top of the parent?
Or is there some UI guideline that I am breaking by desiring this?
Or is there a cleaner design somehow? I thought of adding a dummy parent that they could all descend from but maybe that's messy. Would that parent need a visual presence? I wouldn't want that.
Suggestions?
You can have as many QMainWindows as you want, or parentless QWidgets. I think the best way to handle your situation is to create your own pseudo parent-child relationship like this:
In your QMainWindow subclass, store a QList of all the QWidgets you want it to manage. Then, again in your QMainWindow subclass, reimplement methods such as QWidget::closeEvent(), QWidget::hideEvent() (for when the window is minimized), and QWidget::showEvent() (for when it is restored) so that it also closes, hides, or shows all of the widgets in its QList. Make sure to also delete them in the QMainWindow subclass's destructor. Now, whenever you create a sub-window, pass the main window a pointer to it not as a normal QWidget child, but just so that it can be added to the main window's QList of QWidgets to manage. E.g.:
MainWindowSubclass::addPseudoChild(QWidget *pseudoChild)
{
myListOfPseudoChildren.append(pseudoChild);
}
Another alternative that hasn't been mentioned yet is populating a QMdiArea with QMdiSubWindows. It doesn't do exactly what you asked for, but it's a pretty clean design nonetheless.
So I thought I would add what I eventually settled upon. This was particularly inspired by the comments of #leemes (Thanks - good stuff) and a little experimentation of my own.
I used the code attached here DetachTabExample
to develop a "Detachable Tab" widget and tab bar. This allows tabs to be dragged outside the main window when they become independent windows. Then if closed they return to the tab bar.
Then I placed all my content in the QMainWindow but in separate tabs. The users can drag the ones they want out on to the other monitor. Seems to be working fine. There are still some extra windows that I have floating but it has cut down the clutter and clarified the structure.

How to update a QLayout and get the new dimensions before returning?

This is driving me nuts. I have a custom menu class that, when set visible, shows a list of items located in a particular folder. When a hardware button is pressed, my application gets the latest list of items, populates the menu with them, and returns.
The menu displaying these items uses a QListWidget filled with custom widgets. Each of the widgets contains one or more QLabels in a horizontal layout, and is created at the time the menu is shown. In order to adjust the text displayed based on the menu width available, I need to get the size of the QLabel AFTER it has been resized according to the layout, but before the menu becomes visible to the user. The problem is, my layout does not get updated until all of the functions constructing my list return.
I have tried QApplication::ProcessEvents() and the layout update functions, but none of them have updated the values of my QLabels before returning. I can set a QTimer when the button is initially pressed, and have it show the menu, update the items, and stop itself, but that seems like a terrible solution.
Any help would really be appreciated! I've spent most of a day on this.
Marlon
I had this exact problem and could not find an answer anywhere on the Internet. Calling Layout.update(), Layout.activate(), or widget.adjustSize() (all suggested in various places) all did not work.
I had a widget with a vertical layout that I wanted to add a QLabel to and then immediately use the size of the QLabel.
The only thing that worked reliably was
layout->addWidget(myLabel);
myLabel->show();
size = myLabel->size();
It would seem that layouts will just not recalculate until you either return from a function and allow the Qt event loop to progress or manually call show() yourself.
How to update a QLayout and get the new dimensions before returning?
Don't. You're not meant to do that. It'll drive you "nuts" because you're doing it backwards. Layout updates are handled asynchronously from the event loop. Instead of getting layout dimensions right away, set yourself up to be part of the system. Some options are:
Implement a custom widget that will interact properly with the layout, growing to fill the available width of the layout. Perhaps all you need is a size policy and a way to elide text?
Make a custom layout that takes the special properties of your use case into account.
You want to call QWidget::adjustSize() on your parent widget. This will force the layout recalculations.
Have you tried using layout()->update(); ?
I've tried many but nothing works for me on Qt 5.15.
Only invented little patch - create timer and get size after 20 msec:
QTimer::singleShot(20, this, [this]
{
const auto height = myLayout->contentsRect().height();
// ...
});

How to remove QWidgets from QSplitter

In my app have a window splitted by a QSplitter, and I need to remove an widget.
How can I do that? I can't find useful methods
It's not clear to me if you want to preserve the widget and put it somewhere else, or if you want to destroy the widget.
Destroying the widget: If you can
get a pointer to the widget, you can
simply delete it. The splitter will
safely be notified that its child is
being deleted and will remove it
from itself.
Preserving the widget: If you grab
the pointer to the widget, you can
simply set its parent to some other
widget and add it to another
widget's layout and it will show up
there. This is safe because the
QSplitter will be notified that one
of its children is being reparented.
If you want to set the parent to NULL (cjhuitt's answer) be aware that you are now responsible for cleaning up that memory because the widget no longer has a parent.
Many things in Qt cannot be "traditionally" removed. Instead call hide() on it and destruct it. From QSplitter documentation:
When you hide() a child its space will
be distributed among the other
children. It will be reinstated when
you show() it again.
I like Tuminoid's answer. But if you absolutely need it removed, try getting the widget you want to remove, and calling setParent( NULL ) on that widget. That's my best guess.
If you hold a pointer to the widget, then just delete it, or use deleteLater() if you want to be on the safe side.
If you do not have the widget pointer, use QSplitter::widget(int index) function. Then, you can use invoke its deleteLater() slot.
If you do not have the widget index, but you still know the widget objectName(), then QObject::findChild() is your only way to get the widget pointer.
I ran into the same problem. In Qt 4.8 to temporally hide one of the widget of a QSplitter I simply hide it. However it is not enough, as the splitter handle is still available to move. But the handle can be accessed and hidden as well:
frameA->setVisible(conditionA);
frameB->setVisible(conditionB);
if ( !(conditionA && conditionB) ) // if only 1 frame is visible
{
splitter->handle(0)->setVisible(false);
}
Another easy way to prevent the child widget from getting deleted is to use QSplitter.takeWidget(child). This is also the recommended way of removing the widget from a splitter. (Qt Documentation)

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