I'm New to QT. I understand that you can force a display refresh, but I've pulled all my hair out trying to figure out how. Here is what I'm specifically trying to do.
I press a button (onClick signal event), which runs code that changes an image (QLabel) on the display, waits for input, and then proceeds by changing a new image (different QLabel). I've tried everything and the display doesn't refresh until the onclick signal event code is complete. Right now, I'm not waiting for user input, I'm using usleep(~500 ms) for testing purposes.
From what I read, QT is event driven meaning that I'm basically creating a bunch of events, that get put in a que, and executed when the (onClick signal event) returns to the (main loop)/(event handler). I don't want to wait until the function is complete, it's going to make programming extremely painful if I have to accomplish this routine entirely based on events.
How can I force the QLabel pixmap to refresh. I've tried everything. Below is all the code I have tried in my onClick signal event handler. (upButton is the name of the QLabel which is a pixmap)
update();
repaint();
ui->upButton->setUpdatesEnabled(TRUE);
update();
repaint();
QPaintEvent paintevent(ui->upButton->childrenRegion());
QPaintEvent * test = &paintevent;
paintEvent(test);
this->changeEvent(test);
ui->upButton->update();
ui->upButton->repaint();
ui->upButton->repaint(ui->upButton->childrenRegion());
repaint();
QApplication::sendPostedEvents();
this->parentWidget()->update();
usleep(100000);
As you can see, I'm just shooting in the dark at this point. I've tried to look at sample code and do all my homework, but I'm lost. Appreciate any help, advice, and or sample code.
I was using sleep to emulate a brief amount of time the computer was waiting for something to happen.
As I stated in my question, I didn't want to use events because it's a whole lot of unnecessary work to accomplish something extremely simply.
Also, the 'event' that needs to take place for the program to continue, is a USB event. Since I'm using an HID class device, there is no way to set an event to happen without a wait loop. USB HID classes don't permit setting interrupts, the OS claims the device.
I managed to get the above to work. I walked through the debugger and noticed the display would refresh before the sleep function. Running the program independently, I got random results with the display refreshing 1% of the time. I got rid of the sleep function, and added some other code in it's place to emulate a delay, and it was fine.
Just for everyone's knowledge, this is possible, it's not forbidden, and it's easy to do with the following:
qApp->processEvents();
qApp is a global external variable in the QApplication header.
Because this USB event is making my flow tricky, I stumbled upon the QWaitCondition Class. I was going to start a process waiting for the USB event. I would wait until the process releases the wait condition for my routine to continue.
But if anyone thinks this is a bad idea, please, speak out. I really do appreciate your feedback PiedPiper and Hostile Fork.
Thank you.
I noticed sometimes when you have multiple layered widgets, or widgets inside of widgets it helps to call their repaint() events.
For example
this->repaint();
this->parentWidget()->repaint();
this->parentWidget()->parentWidget()->repaint();
This is far easier then pushing out any processing to another Thread, or creating additional event handlers.
You shouldn't be waiting for input in your event handler. You need to rethink the logic of your program to use events the way they were intended. All the update() and repaint() calls in your code are unnecessary if you return to the event loop.
If i understood correctly, you have a slot and in this slot, you update the image shown in a QLabel. But you want this change to be displayed before the slot finishes.
If that is the case, issue an update() event, and call qApp->processEvents(). This method processes events that are waiting in the event queue and then returns, therefore this may be what you are after.
PS: an update() may not be necessary at all, i am not sure.
Related
We have a significantly multi-threaded embedded Qt application. However the bulk of it's processing is done in the main thread (i.e.: first started), which obviously also handles the screen painting. For inter-thread communication, a truckload of signal/slot calls are used.
Everything works fine, until the CPU-load hits a certain point, and then the screen stops updating. It doesn't matter what happens to cause the load - more data arriving, more detailed record-processing, extra logging, etc.
From the logs, I can see the main program loop executing many times a second, and while the CPU load is low - I also see the log from one of the widget paint() functions - every iteration. When the load gets too high, I still see the main loop executing, but the widget paint() functions are not called (and the screen is not updating).
Is this a known bug?
Is there some way to debug this further?
Is there a way to absolutely force a screen refresh?
I suspect that possibly some kind of signal/slot handling is starving the paint of CPU time. I imagine the signal interrupting the paint somehow, but before the handling is done, another signal arrives. Do signals/slots work like this?
EDIT: Based on #Jeremy Friesner's comments below, so far I've tried:
// KLUDGE: TRY TO FORCE A REPAINT
// QCoreApplication::postEvent( this, new QEvent(QEvent::UpdateRequest), Qt::HighEventPriority );
QCoreApplication::sendEvent( this, new QEvent(QEvent::UpdateRequest) );
qApp->processEvents();
To no avail.
EDIT2:
Also tried:
//QCoreApplication::postEvent( this, new QEvent(QEvent::Paint), Qt::HighEventPriority );
QCoreApplication::sendEvent( this, new QEvent(QEvent::Paint) );
qApp->processEvents();
For test purposes I'd like to create and display a widget. For now I only need the widget to render correctly but in the future I may want to extend this so I simulate various events to see how the widget behaves.
From various sources it would appear that the following should work:
QApplication app;
QPushButton button("Hello");
button.show();
// Might also be necessary:
QApplication::processEvents();
But for me the widget does not render correctly. A window is created to display the widget, however it is entirely black.
I can get the widget to render correctly by adding the following lines:
std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(10));
QApplication::processEvents();
With 10 milliseconds being about the smallest time necessary to get the widget to render correctly.
Does anyone know how to get this to work without the time delay, or know why the delay is necessary?
To test Qt GUI application you need at least QApplication instance and event loop being processed. The fastest way is just use QTEST_MAIN macro, this answer explains in a nice way what it does exactly. However, to have more flexibility (e.g. to use GTest, GMock) you can also simply create QAplication instance in your tests main (no need to call exec).
Then, to have the events processed, you should invoke QTest::qWait. This will process your events for the specified amount of time. It is a good practice to use qWaitFor which accepts a predicate - this way you avoid race conditions in your tests.
In the particular scenario, when you expect some signal to be emitted, you can also use similar functionality of QSignalSpy::wait.
Small example when we want to wait until some parameters are passed from one item to another:
QSignalSpy spy(&widget1, &Widget1::settingsChanged);
widget2->applySettings();
ASSERT_TRUE(spy.wait(5000));
// do some further tests based on the content of passed settings
Why don't you want to have the application run exec ? The process of displaying a widget is not "static". You don't "draw" the widget on the screen, but rather you have an application that listen for various events and receives draw events from the windowing manager. The application can only draw the widget when the windowing manager asks it to.
The reason your second code works is that you wait sufficiently long for the windowing manager to have sent the "draw" request in your conditions. This does not guarantee it will always work.
If you want to guarantee the display of the widget, you need to start a loop and wait until you have received at least one draw event, but even that isn't foolproof.
As expertly described by Vincent Fourmond, widgets are not a one-off deal. The GUI is non-blocking and for this, it needs to run in an event loop.
The exec() method starts this event loop which you mimicked by polling.
While it is possible to combine Qt's event loop with other event loops, I would recommend you a simpler solution:
Proceed your program within the event loop by calling a method when it starts. Find an excellent answer here on how to do this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8877968/21974
As you mentioned unit testing, there is also a signal you can use for doing checks at the end of the lifecycle (before widgets are destroyed): QApplication::aboutToQuit. This will happen when the last window is closed (programmatically or by the user).
I'm beginner learning Qt, and trying to understand a Qt provided example for download operation. In downloadmanager.cpp, a member function is the following:
void DownloadManager::append(const QUrl &url)
{
if (downloadQueue.isEmpty())
QTimer::singleShot(0, this, SLOT(startNextDownload()));
downloadQueue.enqueue(url);
++totalCount;
}
I'm confused to why, if downloadQueue is empty, it will need to activate the startNextDownload() before adding the url. (note that: startNextDownload() ends the program if the downloadQueue is empty)
I'm unsure why: QTimer::signleShot(x, y, z) has been used at all. As I understand it to be, a timer that activates the slot with delay of 0 millisecond.
I could not figure out from looking at Qt Assistant whether singleShot is a one time setup for repeated activation to the slot at given millisecond interval or whether it is one time
Clarification:
I'm a beginner and in examples like:
statement1;
statement2;
I'm used to seeing statement1 running and finishing before moving on to working on statement2. But trying to learn Qt and reading the given example, I see the SLOT(startNextDownload()) being activated after downloadQueue.enqueue(url); has taken place. I am trying to understand why does this work.
This queues a callback in the message queue.
The timer immediately elapses, and a message is posted to the message queue. When the process reaches the main loop for the next time, the startNextDownload() function is called. By this time, the URL is in the queue.
The startNextDownload() function is called from the dispatch context, where it is safe to change window contents. This way, the DownloadManager class can be used from a multithreaded application, where the thread starting the download might be running concurrently with the handler for a Paint event. By invoking it from the same thread that would handle Paint events you can be sure that no such event is being processed, and you can update widgets safely.
If a widget needs to be repainted afterwards, it then asks to be repainted, and the OS will send a Paint event if the widget is currently visible.
Answer to current question title
Every call to QTimer::singleShot(...) is executed on the event loop of the thread where it is invoked **. If invoked from the main thread, it'll be the event loop started with app.exec().
According to the Qt-Network-Manager-Example, this function is called after the network-manager is filled with the URL's so the single-shot will be processed after the queue has been completely filled. Poorly the qt documentation isn't that clear about this topic yet, so for more information about event processing etc please look here.
Answer for old question title
Before I start, the timer is for having the download in an extra thread. So the GUI keeps responsive.
The complete downloadNext() method is recursive. It will be only called once and called till the queue is empty.
See this:
void DownloadManager::append(const QStringList &urlList)
{
foreach (QString url, urlList)
append(QUrl::fromEncoded(url.toLocal8Bit())); //Call for only one URL
...
}
void DownloadManager::append(const QUrl &url)
{
if (downloadQueue.isEmpty())
//I'm only called if the queue is empty! And I will be called after the next line. Not instantly!
QTimer::singleShot(0, this, SLOT(startNextDownload()));
downloadQueue.enqueue(url);
++totalCount;
}
After the queue is empty each method returns and at least the message that the download is done will be printed.
So why does this work?
Please see first chapter below.
you can understand things about Class QTimer before you end up with a solution as you desire, please have a look here for your understanding
I am writing a simple GUI, in which I have a ComboBoxText. I write a log message when ever the user clicks on the ComboBoxText.
I have tried almost all the button release and popup signals but no results. The only thing which works is signal_changed() but I don't not need that. Please help me, below is my sample code :
myCombo->signal_button_release_event().connect(sigc::mem_fun(this,&ComboBoxText::ComboInput),false);
and here is the call back function:
bool ComboBoxText::ComboInput(GdkEventButton *pEvt) {
// Here do the desired stuffs !!
return false; }
Use GTK+ property popup-shown. Not sure about Gtkmm syntax, probably property_popup_shown().get_value().
If you need a signal to listen to, connect to popdown or notify::popup-shown (the latter is invoked when property value changes; again, I'm not sure about Gtkmm syntax).
The idea here was to fire an event when the ComboBoxText is clicked. After some readings I figured it out that the ComboBoxText does not fire any on_click event as such.
One could mask a key press event (which by the way gets fired) and call the signal handler. This might not be handy for people who specifically looking for a on_click event but for those who are working with a keyboard or touch screen device. Here is a small chunk of code :`
mCombo.add_events(Gdk::KEY_PRESS_MASK);
mCombo.signal_event().connect(sigc::mem_fun(this,&ClassName::Handler),false);
cheers :)
I'm attempting to implement a simple, lightweight system for recording Qt GUI events and playing them back from a script. I thought this would be fairly straightforward using the magic of Qt's event system, but I'm running into a problem I don't understand.
Here's quick summary of what I'm doing:
RECORDING:
I use QApplication.instance().eventFilter() to capture all GUI events I'm interested in* and save them to a Python script, in which each step looks something like this:
obj = get_named_object('MainWindow.my_menubar')
recorded_event = QMouseEvent(2, PyQt4.QtCore.QPoint(45, 8), 1, Qt.MouseButtons(0x1), Qt.KeyboardModifiers(0x0))
post_event(obj, recorded_event)
PLAYBACK:
I simply execute the script above, in a worker (non-GUI) thread. (I can't use the GUI thread because I want to keep sending scripted events to the application, even if the 'main' eventloop is blocked while a modal dialog eventloop is running.)
The important stuff happens in my post_event() function, which needs to do two things:
First, call QApplication.postEvent(obj, recorded_event)
Wait for all events to finish processing:**
Post a special event to the same eventloop that obj is running in.
When the special event is handled:
Call QApplication.processEvents()
Set a flag that tells the playback thread it's okay to continue
After the second part is complete, my expectation is that all effects of the first part (the recorded event) have completed, since the special event was queued after the recorded event.
The whole system mostly seems to work just fine for mouse events, key events, etc. But I'm having a problem with QAction handlers when I attempt to playback events for my main QMenuBar.
No matter what I try, it seems that I can't force my playback thread to block for the completion of all QAction.triggered handlers that result from clicking on my QMenu items. As far as I can tell, QApplication.processEvents() is returning before the QAction handler is complete.
Is there something special about QMenu widgets or QAction signals that breaks the normal rules for QApplication.postEvent() and/or QApplication.processEvents()? I need a way to block for the completion of my QMenu's QAction handlers.
[*] Not every event is recorded. I only record spontaneous() events, and I also filter out a few other types (e.g. Paint events and ordinary mouse movements).
[**] This is important because the next event in the script might refer to a widget that was created by the previous event.
I think your problem might best be served by using QFuture and QFutureWatcher (that is, if you're using the QtConcurrent namespace for threads, and not QThreads). Basically, the Qt Event handling system does NOT necessarily handle events in the order they're posted. If you need to block until a certain action is completed, and you're doing that action in a separate thread, you can use the QFuture object returned by QtConcurrent::run() with a QFutureWatcher to block until that particular thread finishes its processing.
Something else to consider is the way you handle events. When you use QApplication.postEvent(), the event you create gets added to the receiver's event queue to be handled later. Behind the scenes, Qt can reorder and compress these events to save processor time. I suspect this is more your problem.
In your function which handles playback, consider using QCoreApplication::processEvents(), which will not return until all events have finished processing. Documentation for QCoreApplication is here.
QMenu widgets and QAction signals are a special case. QMenu has an exec() function, normally used for popups. I suspect (but I don't know for sure) that QMenuBar would use this mechanism when it opens a regular pull-down menu. The docs are not clear about this, but Menus act a lot like dialog boxes in that they block all other user activity - how would Qt do this except by giving menus their own event loop? I can't fill in all the blanks from the information in your post, but I don't see how your playback thread would cope with a new event loop.