How to invoke mulitple dialogs and associate them wth a user thread? - c++

I am developing an application which allows multiple Modal dialogs to be opened simultaneous. I have been experiencing an issue as to whenever I close the first dialog, it closes without error and call doesn't back to the callee until I close the second dialog which is defeating the purpose what I have to achieve.
Sample code:
Class A
{
func1()
{
....
DOModal()
....//some processing
}
Class B
{
func2()
{
...
doModal()
}
}
I tried with creating a user thread and event mechanism by associating it with the dialog but what is happening is it's actually not letting me to open the another dialog until I respond. I still want the execution to happen as it is.
My application is a single threaded environment.

DoModal dialog will allow you to launch only one at a time for each thread. Instead, you can try create and show the dialog with the parameters nIDTemplate as the ID of dialog and pParentWnd as parent window. Here you will not be required to create the multiple threads.

Related

Close Dialogs once its main dialog is closed

I have Main Dialog which has some buttons. Each button will generate an independent dialog as follows:
void MainDialog::onAButtonClicked()
{
Dialog *dial = new Dialog(pass some parameters);
dial->show();
}
The problem with this approach is when the user closes the Main Dialog, the running independent dialog is not closed. I don't want this issue to occur. Some solutions suggest to override closeEvent and reject, I've tried them but these require me to create *dial as a member data of Main Dialog. This works but I don't want this approach because I need to delete this dialog once the user closes the window completely. I've tried to allocate some memory using new and delete object on close or reject events but the app hangs. What is the proper approach to solve this issue?
connect(this,SIGNAL(finished(int)),dial,SLOT(close()));
or
connect(this,SIGNAL(rejected()),dial,SLOT(close()));

MFC create Modeless dialog that does not lose focus

I want to create a dialog in MFC that, once it shows up, it can't lose focus.
This is for blocking the user access to the main SDI window, while it is processing data. The flow is something similar to:
User triggers process
Application shows the dialog
Application starts the process function
I can't do this with a Modal dialog, because the DoModal() function doesn't return until the dialog closes, so this will never trigger the step 3.
How can this be done?
Edit
These are the functions for notifying a task start and task end:
void CmodguiApp::_notify_task_start() {
_processing_dialog->DoModal();
}
void CmodguiApp::_notify_task_end() {
_processing_dialog->EndDialog(1);
}
This is the code triggering a task process:
void trigger_task(std::function<void()> f) {
CmodguiApp::_notify_task_start();
f();
CmodguiApp::_notify_task_end();
}
Try the following approach:
Call the
_processing_dialog->DoModal();
On the Process dialog class do it wherever appropriate:
AfxGetApp()->GetMainWnd()->SendMessage(WM_YOUR_USER_MESSAGE)
On the main window class message map, add
ON_MESSAGE(WM_YOUR_USER_MESSAGE, YourUserMessageHandlerFunction)
Implement the YourUserMessageHandlerFunction(). Now you have retaken the handling at the main window.

How to return from exec method programmatically in static singleton class

I am developing Qt application (Qt version 4.7.3) on SBC6000x board.
I have a MessageBox class derived from QDialog. I have made this class singleton.
Whenever a messagebox is to be show I am using .exec method to show it.
There are few places where I need to show messageboxes one after another.
So, to show new messagebox, I have to close previous one and show new one.
e.g. When Messagebox is open and at same time I receive an error from background I have to close the messagebox which is currently shown and show the one with error.
To closes previous dialog I have exposed CloseDlg method from messagebox class and trying to close it.
Inside this CloseDlg I am emitting finished signal.
void CMsgBox::CloseDlg()
{
if (NULL != CMsgBox::m_msgBox)
{
if(CMsgBox::m_msgBox->isVisible())
{
emit CMsgBox::m_msgBox->finished(0);
//QApplication::processEvents();
}
}
}
and calling it as
CMsgBox::CloseDlg();
My show method is :-
int CMsgBox::showMsgBox(Icon icon, const QString &textMsg, const QString &okBtnText)
{
if (CMsgBox::m_msgBox == NULL)
{
CMsgBox::m_msgBox = new CMsgBox();
}
CMsgBox::m_msgBox->setText(textMsg);
CMsgBox::m_msgBox->setIcon(icon);
CMsgBox::m_msgBox->setOkBtnText(okBtnText);
CMsgBox::m_msgBox->exec();
return CMsgBox::m_msgBox->m_btnPressed; //return, unblock the call
}
Again when I call showMsgBox,it is showing me following warning.
QDialog::exec: Recursive call detected
Problem is, it doesn’t return from previous exec call (unless we return, as commented above //).
I tried same with close(), accept(), reject() methods instead of finished() event but nothing worked.
What is the way to return from previous exe call and achieve above scenario? Any help is welcome.
What you have here looks like a race condition. A modal QDialog runs its own event loop, so your application behaves like a multithreaded application and you need to take care of concurrency and race conditions.
When you receive a second in your main event loop, you call CMsgBox::CloseDlg() and CMsgBox::showMsgBox() in quick succession. However, CloseDlg() tells the dialog's event loop to return, but CloseDlg() actually returns before the dialog's event loop is done cleaning up, and showMsgBox() attempts to call exec() on a dialog which hasn't finished exiting yet.
What you need to do is, when you call CMsgBox::CloseDlg(), connect to the finished(int) signal, and only when you receive the finished(int) can you safely exec() the dialog again.
NOTE: When connecting to the finished(int) signal, make sure to use a Qt::QueuedConnection instead of a Qt::DirectConnection which is the default.
So, you need modeless dialog box. As explained in their documentation :
Modeless dialogs are displayed using show(), which returns control to the caller immediately.
Therefore, instead of showing the box with exec(), show it with show().
Alternative to show() method suggested in another answer is, use QDialog::open(). It will return, but will still give you modal dialog, so the rest of the GUI will be disabled until you close it.

Main dialog destroys before command message handler returns

My program use a modeless dialog to interact with the user and also has a tray icon.
A user can quit the app immediately by using the tray icon.
BOOL OnInitDialog()
{
init data...
}
void OnDestroy()
{
destroy data...
}
void OnSomeButton()
{
CFileDialog dlg;
...
dlg.DoModal(m_hWnd));
access data...
...
}
void OnMenuExit()
{
DestroyWindow();
}
The problem is that when I popup a modal dialog(OnSomeButton), and then quit using the tray icon menu, the main dialog is destroyed first, and then the modal one returns, trying to access some invalid data, causing a crash.
I know i can add some check code before accessing the data, but is there any other way?
Is there any way to ensure OnSomeButton() returns before window destroy?
You need to add your own application level code. There is no system support for this issue primarily because there can be so many pecularities that no generic approach is possible.
Yeah. When you quit from the tray menu, you can send a WM_CLOSE or similar message to your modal dialog that causes it to exit. Even if your main window is destroyed before that OnSomeButton returns you will be okay provided the remainder of that function does not access any class internals (member variables etc). You could ensure this by having the window proc of your modal dialog return an 'abort' code or something when it is closed in this way.

Application wide periodic tasks with Dialog Based MFC application

In Single Document Interface (SDI) or Multiple Document Interface (MDI) MFC application, I created an application wide timer in the View. The timer will tick as long as the application is running and trigger some periodic actions.
How can I do the same with Dialog Based MFC application?
Should I create Thread's Timer (SetTimer with NULL HWND) and pass a callback function to it?
Should I create worker threads? My experience with other projects was when I tried to display some feedback GUI from non-GUI/worker threads, I need to roll out my own "delegate"/command pattern and a "delegate invoker"/command invoker. The worker thread will send message (I think using message is safer than direct function call when dealing across thread-boundary, CMIIW) to the UI-thread. and the UI-thread will be the "delegate"/command invoker. Failing to do this and to make sure that the windows/dialogs have the correct parent will result in bizzare behaviors such as the Application suddenly disappears to the background; Window/Dialog that is shown behind the current window/dialog and causing the current window to be unresponsive/unclickable. Probably I was doing something wrong but there were so much problems when dealing with threads.
Are there best practices for this?
A timer works as well in a dialog-based application as an SDI or MDI app. OTOH, timers are (mostly) a leftover from 16-bit Windows. If you want to do things periodically, a worker thread is usually a better way to do it (and yes, Windows Mobile supports multiple threads).
Edit: in a dialog-based application, the main dialog exists for (essentially) the entire life of the application. Unless you really need the timer during the milliseconds between application startup and dialog creation or dialog destruction and application exit, just attach it to the dialog. Otherwise, you can attach it to the main window -- which MFC creates and destroys, even though it's never displayed.
If you use the MFC Wizard to create the Dialog based app, you probably have a hidden view window as well as a dialog window. The view window creates the dialog with DoModal(), which runs the dialog in the same thread, effectively suspending the view window.
While the dialog is open, the view window will not process any events. So, if the view window owns the timer, it will not process the timer events.
The simplest solution is to create the timer in the dialog and let the dialog handle the timer messages.
IMO, use the Timer if it solves the problem. As you've mentioned a Worker Thread interacting with the UI, in MFC, can be more trouble than its worth sometimes.
If the problem is simple enough for a timer to suffice, thats what i'd use (Remember KISS)
SetTimer does not have to be handed a window to work, it can call a callback method.
You can use that in your application - declare in your CWinApp (or anywhere really)
static void CALLBACK OnTimer(HWND, UINT, UINT, DWORD);
Then in the InitInstance call SetTimer(0, [eventid], [time period], OnTimer);
In OnTimer you can get back to the CWinApp instance via AfxGetApp() or theApp since there is only one.
Second attempt: my previous answer was dne in a hurry and was not correct.
Your basic vanilla MFC Dialog app only uses one thread. The main thread starts with a class derived from CWinApp. In the InitInstance() method it launches the dialog using CDialog::DoModal(). This function doesn't return until the dialog is closed.
While the dialog is running, the CWinApp class does not process any messages, so won't see a WM_TIMER.
There are many ways around this.
Let the first dialog own the timer and make all other dialogs children of it. This might be OK, depending on your dialog requirements, but it might be too restrictive.
Launch the first Dialog as modeless, i.e. use Create() instead of DoModal(). Create() returns straight away (putting the Dialog into a different thread). You can then create a message loop in the CWinApp class and process timers there. You'll have to use thread timers instead of window timers as the CWinApp class doesn't have a window. (or you could create a hidden window if that is more convenient).
You can hack the dialog's mesage loop and make it pass messages to the CWinApp class' message handler. That is quite complex and not for the faint hearted.
You can create a dedicated timer thread. You'd probably do that from the CWinApp class before it creates the dialog, but other strategies are possible.
Do any of those schemes sound like they fit your needs? If not, maybe you can explain your needs more fully and we might be able to come up with something appropriate.