Which UI item allows dynamic expansion on the go in Qt? - c++

Question

Suppose I have a single text box and a radio button placed below the text box .
What I want is that if the user enters some text and ALSO clicks the radio button a similar text box and a radio button should appear just below. And similar thing should happen if the user does that for new UI items.
Any suggestions what classes I should be looking for?

Answer 1

The relevant class you need to handle the inserting of new widgets is one of the QLayout subclasses, most likely QVBoxLayout it sounds like. This will allow you to insert a new textbox and radio button at the bottom of the layout, which will then automatically expand to fit these new widgets.
Inserting the new objects is pretty straightforward. Connect a slot to a signal of the QRadioButton that's at the bottom of the layout, like the QRadioButton::toggled or QRadioButton::clicked signals. This slot will check if the above textbox has any text in it, and, if so, insert a new textbox/radio button pair below them.
To be clear, this slot should be a method of the widget that uses the layout to arrange its sub-widgets. For example, if you're putting all these objects in a QGroupBox, then that's the object to which you'd add the slot I'm describing.
Here is an (untested) example:
class Group : public QGroupBox {
Q_OBJECT
public:
Group(QWidget* parent = nullptr) : QGroupBox(parent)
{
layout = new QVBoxLayout(this);
insertNewRow();
}
private slots:
void insertNewRow(bool checked = true) {
/* You might want to make this remove the row if the button is unchecked */
if (!checked)
return;
/* Only add row if text box is non-empty */
if (textBoxes.isEmpty() || textBoxes.last()->text().isEmpty())
return;
/* Disconnect slot for previous radio button */
QObject::disconnect(radioButtons.last(), 0, 0, 0);
/* Add new text box and button, labeled Button 1, Button 2, etc. */
textBoxes.append(new QLineEdit("", this));
radioButtons.append(new QRadioButton(QString("Button %1").arg(textBoxes.size())), this));
/* Connect signal/slot to add new row when clicked */
QObject::connect(radioButtons.last(), &QRadioButton::toggled, this, &Group::insertNewRow);
}
private:
QVBoxLayout* layout;
QList<QLineEdit*> textBoxes;
QList<QRadioButton*> radioButtons;
};