How to provide user options with expanding layouts QVBoxLayout in QT - c++

I currently have 3 Vertical Layouts in my form. I want to provide the user the option of resizing them to their liking by stretching them. Can this be achieved with Vertical layouts ?

You can use QSplitter as said before. Even being not possible to add it by Designer, there is a way to solve. Create those frames in your widget (which have no layout), and in your cpp and h file you will do that:
in header, write
class YourClass : public QSplitter
instead
class YourClass : public QWidget
and replace in your cpp these declaration on constructor
QWidget(parent)
for
QSplitter(parent)
I guess it does (or almost, perhaps some other changes will be necessary, as add include files).
EDIT: at this time usin code in a QMainWindow class:
QSpliter *splitter = new QSplitter(this) //or declare 'splitter' in .h file.
splitter->setOrientation(Qt::Vertical);
splitter->addWidget(widget1);
splitter->addWidget(widget2);
splitter->addWidget(widget3);
setCentralWidget(splitter);

As of 4.8.6, it's possible to add a QSplitter in Qt Designer by using the Lay out [horizontally/vertically] in splitter layout option. It's somewhat surprising that it's not listed in the widget box, but you can use it.

Related

Adding one ui file into another

Suppose i have designer files with there respective classes say form.ui , form.h , form.cpp and myclass.ui , myclass.h , myclass,cpp . Now what i want is 2 different things .
Now i have a widget and a layout in the myclass.ui file and i now using addLayout function i add the form.ui file into it . Now i want it so that whole of the form.ui file content should come into small layout space by self adjusting . But that is not happening . So how could i achieve that
QUILoader is your solution but maybe not the best, specially if you have custom actions & functions for your form.ui in your form.h & form.cpp. The easiest way its to promote a widget inside your widget and then make it not visible. When you have to show it, you can just change the hidden state.
In another case, you can create it dynamically and manage the memory by yourself.
Example of QUiLoader:
// your main widget
MyClass *myclass = new MyClass();
// to generate a widget with a .ui file
QUiLoader loader;
QFile file("form.ui");
file.open(QFile::ReadOnly);
QWidget *myForm = loader.load(&file, this);
file.close();
// insert the widget in your main container
myclass->layout()->addWidget(myForm);

Set CSS in QPushButton's subclass's constructor

I'm creating my custom push button class by subclassing QPushButton. However for some reason setting that class's CSS in its constructor has no effect; I have to do it in for example paintEvent, then everything is fine. I could just have a global .qss file and set it for the entire application, but I want the class to manage its own styles. Why doesn't my approach work?
The code:
custompushbutton.h
class CustomPushButton: public QPushButton
{
Q_OBJECT
public:
explicit CustomPushButton(QWidget *parent = 0);
~CustomPushButton() = default;
};
custompushbutton.cpp
CustomPushButton::CustomPushButton(QWidget *parent)
: QPushButton(parent)
{
setStyleSheet("background-color: black;"); // this does not work
}
EDIT: For future readers, if you're having a similar issue (i.e. Qt seems to ignore your CSS you set in code), see if you haven't edited the object's styleSheet property in Qt Creator - scroll down in the properties list and make sure styleSheet is empty and NOT BOLD - that was the issue in my case. If it is bold, it means Qt is still using that empty field as the object's CSS, thereby overriding your styles. To clear it either hit the little arrow next to the field in Qt Creator or open up the .ui file and delete the <styleSheet> XML property.
Thanks to JMik for pointing me in the right direction.
The performance cost of setting a stylesheet is surprisingly high, especially if you're developing for an embedded system.
I'd suggest, like you said, using a global stylesheet and specify the class name, like this:
CustomPushButton { background-color: black; }
this way all CustomPushButton will have the same style, and the object will take less time to create.
As for the reason why it doesn't work in your case, I'd guess maybe your accidentally changing the stylesheet again after the creation of the CustomPushButton.
I tested your code on my side and it worked, so it probably has something to do with code your not showing

Using a factory to create QT promoted widgets

Promoting widgets is one of the best features in the QT Designer. But when using the designer, it 'new's the object there it self ( inside setupUi ). This limits the ability to extend the interface file.
Is it possible to use a factory of some sort to get the promoted widgets, so that when a sub class of a promoted widget is required, this could be achieved via changing the factory and returning the sub class of the widget.
requirement:
NamePanel* myPanel;
void setupUi(QWidget* pWidget)
{
myPanel = Factory::CreateNamePanel();
}
Is there a work around to achieve this?
Unfortunately it seems not to be possible to add a factory into the Ui files. A workaround would be to have a QWidget with an attached layout in the ui and add the factory generated widget to this layout.
The code would look like this:
ui->setupUi(this);
QWidget *panel = Factory::CreateNamePanel();
ui->namePanelContainer->layout()->addWidget(panel);

How to extend QDockWidget functions in Qt?

I'm new to Qt, tried several widgets and found that QDockWidget is the most modern/interactive one to work with
But I've found a little limitation "about where to dock the widget only in the 4 sides, left/right/top/bottom"
I want to do one of the two following things and any one should work.
Add more areas to dock widget "for example it can recognize separators between widgets and get its data from there , then resize itself depending on that"
Reimplement the whole functions of QDockWidget into QWidget and do
it like option 1
Thanks in advance
In Qt you can pretty much inherit any class into a new class of your own and extend it yourself. for example:
// New class that inherits QDockWidget and extends its functionality
ExtendedQDockWidget : public QDockWidget
{
public:
ExtendedQDockWidget(QWidget * parent = 0) :
QDockWidget(parent)
{
// ... do any extra initialisations here
}
ExtendedFunc(/* some params */)
{
// code here
}
}
You can also re-implement or overload existing functions to do exactly what you want.

Why do we pass "this" pointer to setupUi function?

I'm fairly new in QT. Taking below fairly simply explain from qt docs :
class CalculatorForm : public QWidget
{
Q_OBJECT
public:
CalculatorForm(QWidget *parent = 0);
private slots:
void on_inputSpinBox1_valueChanged(int value); //why is that slots are private?
private:
Ui::CalculatorForm ui;
};
and implementation of constructor
CalculatorForm::CalculatorForm(QWidget *parent)
: QWidget(parent) {
ui.setupUi(this); // <-- Question below
}
Q: I was wondering why do we pass this pointer to setupUi function?, what does it do ?
So that the dialog will have the caller as parent, so that eg when the parent is closed the dialog can be closed automatically. Generally all gui elements have a pointer to their parent.
private slots:
void on_inputSpinBox1_valueChanged(int value); //why is that slots are private?
These are auto generated slots which exactly match the naming of the gui elments in QtDesigner. They are only meant to do the direct hookup to those gui elements and so should be dealt with in this class. If these signals were extended to other classes then any change in the gui would require changing a lot of other code which doesn't need to know details of the gui.
In the handler slot for the specific gui element you can then emit another more general signal to the rest of the app.
The only widget that setupUi doesn't create is the widget at the top of the hierarchy in the ui file, and as the Ui::CalculatorForm class instance doesn't know the widget it has to fill, it (this) has to be passed explicitly to the class at some point.
this or any other widget you would pass to it, is used as the parent to all other subwidgets. For example, you could fill a widget without inheritance like this:
QWidget *widget = new QWidget;
Ui::CalculatorForm *ui = new Ui::CalculatorForm;
ui->setupUi(widget);
widget->show();
But really, it would be easier to understand if you read the content of the uic generated file (probably named ui_calculatorform.h).
setupUi creates the instances of widgets (QLabel, QTextEdit and so on). The [user interface compiler] (http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/uic.html) gets information for you from the .UI form and generates widget-creation code in the generated moc source files.
The manual way of creating widgets without using the Qt Designer or a UI file would be like so:
QWidget* pWidget = new QWidget(this);
I think it is to add the caller widget to the layout of this UI.
This widget will be the toplevel widget.
Martin Beckett answer might be correct as well, as what he described is a common behavior in Qt (cf the 'parent' argument in most of widget's derived class constructor)
Note that you have alternative ways how designer can auto-generate code.
In this case you have a separate 'UI' class for this code which is not QObject so it also is not a QWidget.
Auto generated code needs information about parent widget and to make auto-conections of slots and signals so this is why you have to pass this.
This pater is less intrusive then other pasterns (that is why it is default). You can also try alternative patters (check Qt Creator Designer options), but I recommend you to see what is generated by designer tools in default settings.