Accessing a widget from outside of its class? - c++

Question

In Qt Creator, I have a couple of widgets declared like so:
Header File:
class MapViewer : public QGraphicsView
{
Q_OBJECT
public:
explicit MapViewer(QGraphicsScene *scene, QWidget *parent = 0);
~MapViewer();
public slots:
void mousePressEvent(QMouseEvent *event);
};
// Declaration for the map editor window.
class MapEditor : public QMainWindow
{
Q_OBJECT
public:
explicit MapEditor(QWidget *parent = 0);
~MapEditor();
public:
QLayout *editorLayout;
QPushButton *btn;
QGraphicsScene *mapScene;
MapViewer *mapView;
private:
Ui::MapEditor *ui;
};
CPP File:
MapEditor::MapEditor(QWidget *parent) :
QMainWindow(parent),
ui(new Ui::MapEditor)
{
ui->setupUi(this);
this->setWindowTitle("2DXY :: Map Editor");
this->setGeometry(10,10,1170,750);
editorLayout = new QVBoxLayout; // Create a new layout
this->setLayout(editorLayout); // Set the widget's layout to our newly created layout.
mapScene = new QGraphicsScene(); // Create a new graphics scene to draw upon.
mapView = new MapViewer(mapScene,this); // Create a new graphics view to display our scene - set its parent to 'this' so that it doesn't open in a new window.
mapView->setHorizontalScrollBarPolicy(Qt::ScrollBarAlwaysOff);
mapView->setVerticalScrollBarPolicy(Qt::ScrollBarAlwaysOff);
mapView->setGeometry(20,20,1178,546); // Width first, then height.
AND:
void MapViewer::mousePressEvent(QMouseEvent *event)
{
// Show an empty message box, just to check that the event handler works!
QMessageBox *notification = new QMessageBox();
notification->show();
notification->exec();
// Some how access the same QGraphicsScene and View (mapScene, mapView) as above, so
// I can update their contents on the open form / window.
}
And as you can see, I wish to access the Graphics Scene again to update it, then redraw it (or whatever). But I'm not able to access the graphics scene at all, despite a few hours of trial and error with declaring widgets in different ways.
I know that the listener itself works, because if it's set to open a new message box, or output to the debug window, then it works, it's just that I can't access the widgets I've already defined.
I feel that there is a (relatively) easy solution to this problem, and that I'm just missing something obvious.

Answer 1

You passed the QGraphicsScene to your MapRender object's constructor. What do you do with the scene within its constructor? Ideally, you should be storing it as a data member of MapRender. For example:
class MapRender {
public:
MapRender(QGraphicsScene* scene)
: scene_(scene)
{
}
public slots:
void mousePressEvent(QMouseEvent *event);
private:
QGraphicsScene* scene_;
}
Now in your implementation of mousePressEvent, you can access to the scene member:
void MapRender::mousePressEvent(QMouseEvent *event) {
int CursorX = event->globalX();
int CursorY = event->globalY();
QGraphicsRectItem *clickedBox = new QGraphicsRectItem(40,40,32,32);
clickedBox->setBrush(QBrush(Qt::blue));
scene_->addItem(clickedBox);
}
Keep in mind you should ideally be putting the implementation of the constructor in your cpp file, but my example does it in the declaration for brevity.

Answer 2

void MapViewer::mousePressEvent(QMouseEvent *event)
{
// Show an empty message box, just to check that the event handler works!
QMessageBox *notification = new QMessageBox();
notification->show();
notification->exec();
// To add something whenever the user clicks, you don't need the view,
// just the scene.
scene()->addItem( new MyItem() );
}
Remember MapViewer derives from QGraphicsView and the view must know about the scene it belongs to - so it has a scene() method to return it, which you inherited.