C++ adding two QSliders together? - c++

I have two QSlider-s/QSpinBox-es. Got those working but not sure about the best way of adding the two together to output the total.
Here is a picture of what I got:

You need to connect signals form the sliders and spinboxes to slots in your main widget (or some other QObject derived class). Doing this allows your main widget to be informed whenever they are changed, do the addition, and output the result where you want. Check out some of the tutorials included with Qt for more info.

Related

Preferred way to design application arhitecture in Qt

I have application which has MainWindow that is divided in three main parts:
Thing is, all three parts need to communicate between themselves. For example, there is a QListView in left section where you select items, and depending on the selected item options change in the right section.
I have come up with three solutions:
draw everything within the MainWindow which would make MainWindow one big superclass:
This solution solves all problems with communication between widgets because all of them are part of MainWindow::ui but then I get one big (potentially messy) class.
put each section in it's own class and make MainWindow a singleton:
This solution is... well a singleton. And I don't really like singletons. I will have access to MainWindow from everywhere (essentially I am creating a global variable) and I would still have to expose MainWindow::ui (and ::uis of other sections) via getter which would mean that everything will have access to ::uis.
put each section in it's own class and connect everything via signals and slots:
This would probably be the best solution but with this solution I need to create getter for each widget from EachSection::ui (to be able to connect it in MainWindow with it's counterparts), I would need a lot of calls to connect() and I also have a problem if two slots react to same signal but they need to react in specific order.
So what would be the best approach?
The best approach would be to define messaging (protocol) between views, so that views is not tightly coupled (all views isolated and dont know about each other) one instance class (main window) know all three and connects them. Imagine a button line edit and label, when you press button label gets value of line edit, button implementation does not depend on lineedit implementation, lineedit does not depend on label and so on, all three classes can be extended or changed and it doesnot affect two other, so you can focus on one of them at the time.

Working with multiple PushButtons and Textboxes dynamically

I have a program that will act as a network-linked visualizer for a hardware system with no screen (think RaspberryPi). I currently have a QTabWidget with around 45-50 QPushButtons and textboxes (for numbers), but I'm bothered by the amount of connect statements I'll have to make. Is there a better way to make this many buttons? I've seen methods for using an array, but nothing with using a QTabWidget and the only thing I saw on that was creating a form.
I'm sorry I can't give you a proper answer with code. I have no proper internet so I have to do this on a phone.
Set up an array of buttons, maybe even a custom class derived from QPushButton with a signal that includes an identifier for the button, such as std::string name. You can then run a loop assigning your connects with something like:
connect(buttonArray[x], SIGNAL(buttonIsPushed(std::string) ), receivingObject, SLOT(buttonWasPushed(std::string)))
Of course this may be of little help if the receiving object has to pass on the signal as a signal.

Dynamical overriding

I want to dynamically instantiate a QWidget and bind its "Pressed" event, either with a Qt signal or by overriding a function.
However I'm only allowed to create one new .cpp file.
I don't know how to override a C++ function dynamically, or how to change a virtual function into a Qt signal.
Is what is represented in the picture above achievable ?
The Widgets Tutorial of the Qt docs is a nice starting point.
Under Qt Widgets Examples you can find the Calculator Example, which should contain all of what you want to do.
Take the code, strip it down to what you need, use and try to understand it.
Or maybe have a look at the Getting Started section.

Qt/C++ - confused about caller/callee, object ownership

I am creating a GUI to manipulate a robot arm. The location of the arm can be described by 6 floats (describing the positions of the various arm joints.
The interface consists of a QGraphicsView with a diagram of the arm (which can be clicked to change the arm position - adjusting the 6 floats). The interface also has 6 lineEdit boxes, to also adjust those values separately.
When the graphics view is clicked, and when the line edit boxes are changed, I'd like the line edit boxes / graphics view to stay in synchronisation.
This brings me to confusion about how to store the 6 floats, and trigger events when they're updated. My current idea is this:
The robot arm's location should be represented by a class, RobotArmLocation. Objects of this class then have methods such as obj.ShoulderRotation() and obj.SetShoulderRotation().
The MainWindow has a single instance of RobotArmLocation.
Next is the bit I'm more confused about, how to join everything up. I am thinking:
The MainWindow has a ArmLocationChanged slot. This is signalled whenever the location object is changed.
The diagram class will have a SetRobotArmLocation(RobotArmLocation &loc). When the diagram is changed, it's free to change the location object, and fire a signal to the ArmLocationChanged slot.
Likewise, changing any of the text boxes will fire a signal to that ArmLocationChanged slot. The slot then has code to synchronise all the elements.
This kind of seems like a mess to me, does anyone have any other suggestions? I've also thought of the following, does it have any merrit?
The RobotArmLocation class has a ValueChanged slot, the diagram and textboxes can use that directly, and bypass the MainWindow directly (seems cleaner?)
thanks for any wisdom!
Except for really simple cases (e.g. a label that shows the value of a slider) my experience has been to stay away from inter-component signal/slot connections inside Qt Designer. Rather, have the component firing the signal of interest connect to a slog defined in the top level QWidget class you're subclassing (i.e. QMainWidow, etc... let's just call it the Form class). You can also go the other way: if you have a custom signal in the Form class, you can connect it with Qt Designer to one of the public widget slots.
To be specific using your example:
I'm going to assume that you have subclassed QMainWindow and QGraphicsView. Let's call the subclasses RobotMainWindow and RobotView.
RobotMainWindow contains the QLineEdit fields and RobotView. The way you specify RobotView in Qt Designer is to insert a QWidget and use the Promote to... feature to tell Qt that the QWidget should be replaced at compile time with your custom RobotView.
Name the QLineEdit fields edit1, edit2...edit6.
In the Qt Designer signal/slot editor define slots in RobotMainWindow to be called when the value in a QLineEdit changes. There are some more elegant ways of doing this, but for simplicity let's say you define 6 slots named setValue1(float), setValue2(float), etc.
In the source code for RobotMainWindow, go declare and define these slots, such that they update your arm, shoulder, whatever.
Also in the source code, define a signal valueChanged() (or multiple for each field, your choice). Have the slots you defined emit valueChanged().
Back in Qt Designer you can now link the appropriate signal from each QLineEdit to the corresponding slot in RobotMainWindow.
Back in the signal/slot editor add the valueChanged() signal to the RobotMainWindow (so Qt Designer knows about it). Connect this signal to a new slot in RobotView, using the procedure above, so it can update the rendering.
Repeat all of this for handling changes from RobotView to the editing fields (via RobotMainWindow.
In short, I think you'll find everything more straight-forward if your route the signals through your Form subclass (which I think of as the Controller in MVC parlance).

Qt-GUI with several "pages", how to synchronize the size of several QWidgets

I am currently writing a wizard-style application using Qt4. I am not using the wizard class however, since going next/back does not make sense from every step in the process.
The user starts off at a "hub"-window with five buttons, each of which take him to another window at a different stage of the process. At the beginning all but the first button of the hub are disabled. After clearing each stage, the user will be directed back to the hub and one new button/stage will get enabled.
Since every stage has significantly differing objectives, I coded every single stage as a single QWidget that gets instantiated in the main() function. To switch between the widgets, I simply hide() the one I am leaving and show() the one I am going to.
However, this leads to problems if the user resized or moved one widget, since the next widget will always show up at its default position instead of the new one.
Is there a way to synchronize the widgets' sizes and positions?
Or, better yet, is there a more elegant way to deal with those different windows than switching between several hidden widgets?
Thank you in advance!
Create one top-level widget that holds the others.
I suggest that you either use QStackedWidget, or, if you want more control, create your own widget and use QStackedLayout directly.
Why not just have one main QWidget as a container for your pages? That way if the user moves the main QWidget and then goes to the next page, it will still open in the new position inside the main widget.
Generally, I've never had occasion to create multiple widgets inside my main method. Don't quite see the point.
I'm beginning on something similar - with different views (perspectives) for different tasks along the way. Using toolbar icons and file menu, not buttons, to move between views. Similar to how MS Outlook allows you to have the window display email, or a calendar, or contacts, etc.
My intent (haven't started yet) is to have one QMainWindow as the application window, containing my various QWidgets that offer the various views. Depending on what task the user is doing, one composite widget will be visible, and the others hidden.