There is a structure that holds raw data (consider int) and a gui that should visualize this data. Gui part consists of a few models and and a few standard views (table and tree). The value should be presented either as a string or as a picture depend on user choice. There are some additional difficulties: in some cases the text is different for different elements - i.e., for the same column 0 normally means "Ok", but for a particular element it should be printed as "Yes", also depend on a user choice some columns should not print text for 0 values at all, living a cell empty and don't clutter the table; next, sometimes cell should show two values - e.g., current value and requested - something like "Yes -> No". This also applies to the case when user wants to see icons.
I see two options:
The model forms string text itself and store it somewhere (in the model item may be). The model also forms composite icon from base icons if it is needed. In that scenario I can use standard delegate and just use standard roles reimplementing QAbstractItemModel::data() method.
Reimplement delegates' paint() method (actually I need to reimplement delegates anyway because I need custom editors like QComboBox). The delegate can get any information it needs through the model and custom roles in paint() method and form the string or complex icon itself. As a suboption, I suppose, it's possible for a model to compose needed information itself, like returning std::tuple<int /*value*/, int /*requested value*/, int /*source element type*/, bool /*text or icon*/> in data() method for Qt::DisplayRole.
Update: I want add one thought about second option. Presumably delegates were introduced to handle the work of representing data. One of the consequences of that is the flexibility delegates can give. If you want to see a raw number in some column, you can just leave the default delegate, if you want some additional info presented in a cell you can set a special delegate for that specific column. And it seems you don't need even touch the model or something else.
Related
I have a QAbstractListModel that has a bunch of custom objects stored in it, and you can access the different fields of the custom objects in the model by specifying a role (if this is an improper use of Qt roles let me know because I must be confused). I want to display this data in a user friendly QTableView. I can get things displaying using a proxy model, but the issue is I don't want to display the raw values, I want to display specific data derived from the raw data. So for instance, I don't want a column for both ItemA.foo and ItemA.bar, I want to display just ItemA.foo - ItemA.bar in a single column. And to add to that, I want the automatic update functionality you get with models where if either ItemA.foo or ItemA.bar change, I want the difference column to automatically update and recalculate.
I would think that the way to do this would be to use some kind of table proxy model that listens to the source model, and then populates its own fields with the values derived from the source model and listens for dataChanged() signals from the source model. Then you plug this proxy model in to a QTableView. But to me this sounds like something that should be done in a view. Or is this something that should be done by the delegate? I could even go so far as to do these calculations in the base model itself and add roles specific to these values that should be displayed in the table, but that sounds like I am really overloading the responsibilities of the model.
TLDR: How do you manipulate data from a model in a QTableView? Should I do the data manipulation in the base model and then send that to the QTableView? Should I use a proxy model that manipulates the base data and sends it to the QTableView? Or am I completely misunderstanding something?
and you can access the different fields of the custom objects in the model by specifying a role
If you look at the documentation for Qt::ItemDataRole, you would see that Qt models should indeed provide different data for different roles but each role means some distinguished purpose of the data corresponding to the role. For example, the most commonly used role is probably Qt::DisplayRole as the data for this role defines the content displayed in the view e.g. it's the text in the table cell. If you are satisfied with all the other aspects of the view - font, background etc - you can just return empty QVariant for corresponding roles from your model, the view would figure out these details on its own. If you are using roles as a substitute for columns i.e. to return different pieces of conceptually the same data item, it is probably not the intended use of roles.
For the other part of your question - you can customize the appearance of data displayed in the view through the use of a delegate. For example, you could subclass QStyledItemDelegate, override its displayText method to display ItemA.foo - ItemA.bar instead of just ItemA.foo and then set this delegate into the column of your view corresponding to ItemA.foo via setItemDelegateForColumn. The tricky part here would be to detect changes in both ItemA.foo and ItemA.bar columns which would affect the text displayed in the delegate. A while back I implemented a dedicated class in one of my projects which listens to changes in some column of the original model and "reroutes" the change into another column through signal emitting. I did it to solve this very issue - to catch changes in what delegate should display although technically another model column is affected into which the delegate is not set.
upon construction of QTreeWidgetItem you can pass a list of strings, so when you insert it in a table(QTreeWidget), you get the strings listed on a row. However, from the methods of the table you can also call setItemWidget and set a text widget or any sort of widget to be in that row, but it seems incompatible with having a string list, since the widget is drawn over the strings. There is also a setData method for the QTreeWidgetItem, which sets some data that can be retreived, but isn't visible to the user. Is there a cookie-cutter way of properly using all three data storage methods? Are they even compatible or must I stick to only one?
The Constructor of QTreeWidgetItem is convenient to immediately list the desired content.
When inserting a custom widget in a cell, you need to change its autoFillBackgroundproperty to true, so that it is not transparent. See the QTreewidget::setItemWidget description:
The given widget's autoFillBackground property must be set to true,
otherwise the widget's background will be transparent, showing both
the model data and the tree widget item.
QTreeWidgetItem::setData can be used when already having an item and you want to change one of its contents.
Of course you can combine any of these methods, but it is hard to say, which approach is best without knowing your use case. Just one more hint: If you just need a plain stupid representation of data that does not change, using QTreeWidget is fine. But if your displayed data can change, e.g. objects get deleted, added, changed in various locations of your code, a QTreeView with a custom data model might be a better choice.
I have a situation where I'm using the IEditorDataFilter interface within a custom UltraGrid editor control to automatically map values from a bound data source when they're displayed in the grid cells. In this case it's converting guid-based key values into user-friendly values, and it works well by displaying what I need in the cell, but retaining the GUID values as the 'value' behind the scenes.
My issue is what happens when I enable the built-in group by functionality and the user groups by a column using my editor. In that case the group by headers default to using the cell's value, which is the guid in my case, so I end up with headers like this:
Column A: 7F720CE8-123A-4A5D-95A7-6DC6EFFE5009 (10 items)
What I really want is the cell's display value to be used instead so it's something like this:
Column A: Item 1 (10 items)
What I've tried so far
Infragistics provides a couple mechanisms for modifying what's shown in group by rows:
GroupByRowDescriptionMask property of the grid (http://bit.ly/1g72t1b)
Manually set the row description via the InitializeGroupByRow event (http://bit.ly/1ix1CbK)
Option 1 doesn't appear to give me what I need because the cell's display value is not exposed in the set of tokens they provide. Option 2 looks promising but it's not clear to me how to get at the cell's display value. The event argument only appears to contain the cell's backing value, which in my case is the GUID.
Is there a proper approach for using the group by functionality when you're also using an IEditorDataFilter implementation to convert values?
This may be frowned upon, but I asked my question on the Infragistic forums as well, and a complete answer is available there (along with an example solution demonstrating the problem):
http://www.infragistics.com/community/forums/p/88541/439210.aspx
In short, I was applying my custom editors at the cell level, which made them unavailable when the rows were grouped together. A better approach would be to apply the editor at the column level, which would make the editor available at the time of grouping, and would provide the expected behavior.
I have two issues:
I have a complex object with Id and Text underneath. For display, I am using TemplateDataField with eval function. Can I bind the complex object to a BoundDataField?
The reason behind binding the complex object to BoundDataField is, I need to make it editable grid. I could not find any documentation or samples which uses Template field, and make that column editable. (I agree it might not be possible.) Now I need to put a dropdown, where user selects a value and I can assign it to the id field of my complex object. I am able to put a dropdown (using EditorProviders) to a bounddatafield, but how can I do it for the template data field described above?
Here is a link to the samples of Editing WebDatagrid: Controls & Application Samples
When using a TemplateDataField you are specifying what you want to use as the template and you can put an editor in that Field. Note that if you do put an editor in that field, you need to handle updates to the grid's value or list that your grid is bound to.
Note that if the values in your drop down have an id associated with them and that can be the value of the grid cell it would be better to use the DropDownEditorProvider with the grid having a bound field where that field is the id of the item that you are selecting.
I am using a List Control to display a representation of elements within a vector. When the list is clicked on another control shows information about that element. The index of the element is currently determined by its index in the control, however if I wish to sort or filter the results this will no longer work.
I have been told that I could use a virtual list control, but the MSDN is not very friendly, can someone run me through how I could use a virtual list control for this?
Frankly - tying data (the position in your data vector) to the presentation of the data in the list control (the position in the list ctrl) is something I would stay away from.
In MFC each control has a "Data" DWORD member variable - when coding in MFC I Always called "SetItemData" for each item added and passed in a pointer that the relevant row referred to e.g.
YourListCtrl.SetItemData((DWORDPTR)&YourData);
Then when the ListCtrl item is selected, you just call
DataTypeYouWant* pData = (DataTypeYouWant*)(YourListCtrl.GetItemData(indexofselecteditem));
Or somesuch thing.
Alternatively - if you don't want to use pointers - hold the index of the item in your original vector in the itemdata for your row (just pass it into the above fns).
To use a virtual list control, set the LVS_OWNERDATA style. You then need to handle the LVN_GETDISPINFO notification message (which is sent via WM_NOTIFY).
If you do this, you are entirely responsible for the data, including the order in which it is shown. Therefore it is up to you to handle sorting and so forth.
By far the easiest way is just to use the item data to set/get an ID that can be used to retrieve the original data, whether that's a vector index or a pointer to the data, or even a key into an associative container.
It really depends on the performance you require.
I have personally seen MAJOR increases in performance for lists holding massive amount of data. However it is much more work to implement, thus for simple uses with not so many data I recommend staying away from it.
Basically, what happens with virtual list controls is that you have your data somewhere in some data structure of your own. Since the list view shows only a small subset of the whole data, it queries you for the content to display when ever something happens (redraw necessary, scroll up or down, change the sorting, etc.).
I don't have handy examples for you. But you can look on codeguru, I am quite sure there are very good examples to start from.
The purpose of virtual list controls is totally different: You should use it for performance reason when you have A LOT of items in your list (I'd say 2500+).
In your case, all you need is to store the vector index in the list item data as NotJarvis explains.