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If the signal returns a value, it is a pointer to an object of the return type of the signal, else, it is 0. If the slot returns a value, we need to copy it in arg 0. If it returns void, we do nothing. The problem is that it is not syntaxically correct to use the return value of a function that returns void.
␡- A Pop-Up Alert in 25 Lines
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
- A Pop-Up Alert in 25 Lines
- An Expression Evaluator in 30 Lines
- A Currency Converter in 70 Lines
- Signals and Slots
In this chapter we begin with brief reviews of three tiny yet useful GUI applications written in PyQt. We will take the opportunity to highlight some of the issues involved in GUI programming, but we will defer most of the details to later chapters. Once we have a feel for PyQt GUI programming, we will discuss PyQt's 'signals and slots' mechanism—this is a high-level communication mechanism for responding to user interaction that allows us to ignore irrelevant detail.
Although PyQt is used commercially to build applications that vary in size from hundreds of lines of code to more than 100 000 lines of code, the applications we will build in this chapter are all less than 100 lines, and they show just how much can be done with very little code.
In this chapter we will design our user interfaces purely by writing code, but in Chapter 7, we will learn how to create user interfaces using Qt's visual design tool, Qt Designer.
Python console applications and Python module files always have a .py extension, but for Python GUI applications we use a .pyw extension. Both .py and .pyw are fine on Linux, but on Windows, .pyw ensures that Windows uses the pythonw.exe interpreter instead of python.exe, and this in turn ensures that when we execute a Python GUI application, no unnecessary console window will appear.* On Mac OS X, it is essential to use the .pyw extension.
The PyQt documentation is provided as a set of HTML files, independent of the Python documentation. The most commonly referred to documents are those covering the PyQt API. These files have been converted from the original C++/Qt documentation files, and their index page is called classes.html; Windows users will find a link to this page in their Start button's PyQt menu. It is well worth looking at this page to get an overview of what classes are available, and of course to dip in and read about those classes that seem interesting.
The first application we will look at is an unusual hybrid: a GUI application that must be launched from a console because it requires command-line arguments. We have included it because it makes it easier to explain how the PyQt event loop works (and what that is), without having to go into any other GUI details. The second and third examples are both very short but standard GUI applications. They both show the basics of how we can create and lay out widgets ('controls' in Windows-speak)—labels, buttons, comboboxes, and other on-screen elements that users can view and, in most cases, interact with. They also show how we can respond to user interactions—for example, how to call a particular function or method when the user performs a particular action.
In the last section we will cover how to handle user interactions in more depth, and in the next chapter we will cover layouts and dialogs much more thoroughly. Use this chapter to get a feel for how things work, without worrying about the details: The chapters that follow will fill in the gaps and will familiarize you with standard PyQt programming practices.
A Pop-Up Alert in 25 Lines
Our first GUI application is a bit odd. First, it must be run from the console, and second it has no 'decorations'—no title bar, no system menu, no X close button. Figure 4.1 shows the whole thing.
To get the output displayed, we could enter a command line like this:
When run, the program executes invisibly in the background, simply marking time until the specified time is reached. At that point, it pops up a window with the message text. About a minute after showing the window, the application will automatically terminate.
The specified time must use the 24-hour clock. For testing purposes we can use a time that has just gone; for example, by using 12:15 when it is really 12:30, the window will pop up immediately (well, within less than a second).
Now that we know what it does and how to run it, we will review the implementation. The file is a few lines longer than 25 lines because we have not counted comment lines and blank lines in the total—but there are only 25 lines of executable code. We will begin with the imports.
We import the sys module because we want to access the command-line arguments it holds in the sys.argv list. The time module is imported because we need its sleep() function, and we need the PyQt modules for the GUI and for the QTime class.
We begin by creating a QApplication object. Every PyQt GUI application must have a QApplication object. This object provides access to global-like information such as the application's directory, the screen size (and which screen the application is on, in a multihead system), and so on. This object also provides the event loop, discussed shortly.
When we create a QApplication object we pass it the command-line arguments; this is because PyQt recognizes some command-line arguments of its own, such as -geometry and -style, so we ought to give it the chance to read them. If QApplication recognizes any of the arguments, it acts on them, and removes them from the list it was given. The list of arguments that QApplication recognizes is given in the QApplication's initializer's documentation.
At the very least, the application requires a time, so we set the due variable to the time right now. We also provide a default message. If the user has not given at least one command-line argument (a time), we raise a ValueError exception. This will result in the time being now and the message being the 'usage' error message.
If the first argument does not contain a colon, a ValueError will be raised when we attempt to unpack two items from the split() call. If the hours or minutes are not a valid number, a ValueError will be raised by int(), and if the hours or minutes are out of range, due will be an invalid QTime, and we raise a ValueError ourselves. Although Python provides its own date and time classes, the PyQt date and time classes are often more convenient (and in some respects more powerful), so we tend to prefer them.
If the time is valid, we set the message to be the space-separated concatenation of the other command-line arguments if there are any; otherwise, we leave it as the default 'Alert!' that we set at the beginning. (When a program is executed on the command line, it is given a list of arguments, the first being the invoking name, and the rest being each sequence of nonwhitespace characters, that is, each 'word', entered on the command line. The words may be changed by the shell—for example, by applying wildcard expansion. Python puts the words it is actually given in the sys.argv list.)
Now we know when the message must be shown and what the message is.
We loop continuously, comparing the current time with the target time. The loop will terminate if the current time is later than the target time. We could have simply put a pass statement inside the loop, but if we did that Python would loop as quickly as possible, gobbling up processor cycles for no good reason. The time.sleep() command tells Python to suspend processing for the specified number of seconds, 20 in this case. This gives other programs more opportunity to run and makes sense since we don't want to actually do anything while we wait for the due time to arrive.
Apart from creating the QApplication object, what we have done so far is standard console programming.
We have created a QApplication object, we have a message, and the due time has arrived, so now we can begin to create our application. A GUI application needs widgets, and in this case we need a label to show the message. A QLabel can accept HTML text, so we give it an HTML string that tells it to display bold red text of size 72 points.*
In PyQt, any widget can be used as a top-level window, even a button or a label. When a widget is used like this, PyQt automatically gives it a title bar. We don't want a title bar for this application, so we set the label's window flags to those used for splash screens since they have no title bar. Once we have set up the label that will be our window, we call show() on it. At this point, the label window is not shown! The call to show() merely schedules a 'paint event', that is, it adds a new event to the QApplication object's event queue that is a request to paint the specified widget.
Next, we set up a single-shot timer. Whereas the Python library's time.sleep() function takes a number of seconds, the QTimer.singleShot() function takes a number of milliseconds. We give the singleShot() method two arguments: how long until it should time out (one minute in this case), and a function or method for it to call when it times out.
In PyQt terminology, the function or method we have given is called a 'slot', although in the PyQt documentation the terms 'callable', 'Python slot', and 'Qt slot' are used to distinguish slots from Python's __slots__, a feature of new-style classes that is described in the Python Language Reference. In this book we will use the PyQt terminology, since we never use __slots__.
So now we have two events scheduled: A paint event that wants to take place immediately, and a timer timeout event that wants to take place in a minute's time.
The call to app.exec_() starts off the QApplication object's event loop.* The first event it gets is the paint event, so the label window pops up on-screen with the given message. About one minute later the timer timeout event occurs and the QApplication.quit() method is called. This method performs a clean termination of the GUI application. It closes any open windows, frees up any resources it has acquired, and exits.
Event loops are used by all GUI applications. In pseudocode, an event loop looks like this:
When the user interacts with the application, or when certain other things occur, such as a timer timing out or the application's window being uncovered (maybe because another application was closed), an event is generated inside PyQt and added to the event queue. The application's event loop continuously checks to see whether there is an event to process, and if there is, it processes it (or passes it on to the event's associated function or method for processing).
Figure 4.2 Batch processing applications versus GUI applications
Although complete, and quite useful if you use consoles, the application uses only a single widget. Also, we have not given it any ability to respond to user interaction. It also works rather like traditional batch-processing programs. It is invoked, performs some processing (waits, then shows a message), and terminates. Most GUI programs work differently. Once invoked, they run their event loop and respond to events. Some events come from the user—for example, key presses and mouse clicks—and some from the system, for example, timers timing out and windows being revealed. They process in response to requests that are the result of events such as button clicks and menu selections, and terminate only when told to do so.
The next application we will look at is much more conventional than the one we've just seen, and is typical of many very small GUI applications generally.
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Signals and slots are used for communication between objects. The signals and slots mechanism is a central feature of Qt and probably the part that differs most from the features provided by other frameworks. Signals and slots are made possible by Qt's meta-object system.
Introduction
In GUI programming, when we change one widget, we often want another widget to be notified. More generally, we want objects of any kind to be able to communicate with one another. For example, if a user clicks a Close button, we probably want the window's close() function to be called.
Other toolkits achieve this kind of communication using callbacks. A callback is a pointer to a function, so if you want a processing function to notify you about some event you pass a pointer to another function (the callback) to the processing function. The processing function then calls the callback when appropriate. While successful frameworks using this method do exist, callbacks can be unintuitive and may suffer from problems in ensuring the type-correctness of callback arguments.
Signals and Slots
In Qt, we have an alternative to the callback technique: We use signals and slots. A signal is emitted when a particular event occurs. Qt's widgets have many predefined signals, but we can always subclass widgets to add our own signals to them. A slot is a function that is called in response to a particular signal. Qt's widgets have many pre-defined slots, but it is common practice to subclass widgets and add your own slots so that you can handle the signals that you are interested in.
The signals and slots mechanism is type safe: The signature of a signal must match the signature of the receiving slot. (In fact a slot may have a shorter signature than the signal it receives because it can ignore extra arguments.) Since the signatures are compatible, the compiler can help us detect type mismatches when using the function pointer-based syntax. The string-based SIGNAL and SLOT syntax will detect type mismatches at runtime. Signals and slots are loosely coupled: A class which emits a signal neither knows nor cares which slots receive the signal. Qt's signals and slots mechanism ensures that if you connect a signal to a slot, the slot will be called with the signal's parameters at the right time. Signals and slots can take any number of arguments of any type. They are completely type safe.
All classes that inherit from QObject or one of its subclasses (e.g., QWidget) can contain signals and slots. Signals are emitted by objects when they change their state in a way that may be interesting to other objects. This is all the object does to communicate. It does not know or care whether anything is receiving the signals it emits. This is true information encapsulation, and ensures that the object can be used as a software component.
Slots can be used for receiving signals, but they are also normal member functions. Just as an object does not know if anything receives its signals, a slot does not know if it has any signals connected to it. This ensures that truly independent components can be created with Qt.
You can connect as many signals as you want to a single slot, and a signal can be connected to as many slots as you need. It is even possible to connect a signal directly to another signal. (This will emit the second signal immediately whenever the first is emitted.)
Together, signals and slots make up a powerful component programming mechanism.
Signals
Signals are emitted by an object when its internal state has changed in some way that might be interesting to the object's client or owner. Signals are public access functions and can be emitted from anywhere, but we recommend to only emit them from the class that defines the signal and its subclasses.
When a signal is emitted, the slots connected to it are usually executed immediately, just like a normal function call. When this happens, the signals and slots mechanism is totally independent of any GUI event loop. Execution of the code following the emit statement will occur once all slots have returned. The situation is slightly different when using queued connections; in such a case, the code following the emit keyword will continue immediately, and the slots will be executed later.
If several slots are connected to one signal, the slots will be executed one after the other, in the order they have been connected, when the signal is emitted.
Signals are automatically generated by the moc and must not be implemented in the .cpp file. They can never have return types (i.e. use void).
A note about arguments: Our experience shows that signals and slots are more reusable if they do not use special types. If QScrollBar::valueChanged() were to use a special type such as the hypothetical QScrollBar::Range, it could only be connected to slots designed specifically for QScrollBar. Connecting different input widgets together would be impossible.
Slots
A slot is called when a signal connected to it is emitted. Slots are normal C++ functions and can be called normally; their only special feature is that signals can be connected to them.
Since slots are normal member functions, they follow the normal C++ rules when called directly. However, as slots, they can be invoked by any component, regardless of its access level, via a signal-slot connection. This means that a signal emitted from an instance of an arbitrary class can cause a private slot to be invoked in an instance of an unrelated class.
You can also define slots to be virtual, which we have found quite useful in practice.
Compared to callbacks, signals and slots are slightly slower because of the increased flexibility they provide, although the difference for real applications is insignificant. In general, emitting a signal that is connected to some slots, is approximately ten times slower than calling the receivers directly, with non-virtual function calls. This is the overhead required to locate the connection object, to safely iterate over all connections (i.e. checking that subsequent receivers have not been destroyed during the emission), and to marshall any parameters in a generic fashion. While ten non-virtual function calls may sound like a lot, it's much less overhead than any new or delete operation, for example. As soon as you perform a string, vector or list operation that behind the scene requires new or delete, the signals and slots overhead is only responsible for a very small proportion of the complete function call costs. The same is true whenever you do a system call in a slot; or indirectly call more than ten functions. The simplicity and flexibility of the signals and slots mechanism is well worth the overhead, which your users won't even notice.
Note that other libraries that define variables called signals or slots may cause compiler warnings and errors when compiled alongside a Qt-based application. To solve this problem, #undef the offending preprocessor symbol.
A Small Example
A minimal C++ class declaration might read:
A small QObject-based class might read:
The QObject-based version has the same internal state, and provides public methods to access the state, but in addition it has support for component programming using signals and slots. This class can tell the outside world that its state has changed by emitting a signal, valueChanged(), and it has a slot which other objects can send signals to.
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All classes that contain signals or slots must mention Q_OBJECT at the top of their declaration. They must also derive (directly or indirectly) from QObject.
Slots are implemented by the application programmer. Here is a possible implementation of the Counter::setValue() slot:
The emit line emits the signal valueChanged() from the object, with the new value as argument.
In the following code snippet, we create two Counter objects and connect the first object's valueChanged() signal to the second object's setValue() slot using QObject::connect():
Calling a.setValue(12) makes a emit a valueChanged(12) signal, which b will receive in its setValue() slot, i.e. b.setValue(12) is called. Then b emits the same valueChanged() signal, but since no slot has been connected to b's valueChanged() signal, the signal is ignored.
Note that the setValue() function sets the value and emits the signal only if value != m_value. This prevents infinite looping in the case of cyclic connections (e.g., if b.valueChanged() were connected to a.setValue()).
By default, for every connection you make, a signal is emitted; two signals are emitted for duplicate connections. You can break all of these connections with a single disconnect() call. If you pass the Qt::UniqueConnectiontype, the connection will only be made if it is not a duplicate. If there is already a duplicate (exact same signal to the exact same slot on the same objects), the connection will fail and connect will return false.
This example illustrates that objects can work together without needing to know any information about each other. To enable this, the objects only need to be connected together, and this can be achieved with some simple QObject::connect() function calls, or with uic's automatic connections feature.
A Real Example
The following is an example of the header of a simple widget class without member functions. The purpose is to show how you can utilize signals and slots in your own applications.
LcdNumber inherits QObject, which has most of the signal-slot knowledge, via QFrame and QWidget. It is somewhat similar to the built-in QLCDNumber widget.
The Q_OBJECT macro is expanded by the preprocessor to declare several member functions that are implemented by the moc; if you get compiler errors along the lines of 'undefined reference to vtable for LcdNumber', you have probably forgotten to run the moc or to include the moc output in the link command.
After the class constructor and public members, we declare the class signals. The LcdNumber class emits a signal, overflow(), when it is asked to show an impossible value.
If you don't care about overflow, or you know that overflow cannot occur, you can ignore the overflow() signal, i.e. don't connect it to any slot.
If on the other hand you want to call two different error functions when the number overflows, simply connect the signal to two different slots. Qt will call both (in the order they were connected).
A slot is a receiving function used to get information about state changes in other widgets. LcdNumber uses it, as the code above indicates, to set the displayed number. Since display() is part of the class's interface with the rest of the program, the slot is public.
Several of the example programs connect the valueChanged() signal of a QScrollBar to the display() slot, so the LCD number continuously shows the value of the scroll bar.
Note that display() is overloaded; Qt will select the appropriate version when you connect a signal to the slot. With callbacks, you'd have to find five different names and keep track of the types yourself.
Qt Signals And Slots Tutorial
Signals And Slots With Default Arguments
The signatures of signals and slots may contain arguments, and the arguments can have default values. Consider QObject::destroyed():
When a QObject is deleted, it emits this QObject::destroyed() signal. We want to catch this signal, wherever we might have a dangling reference to the deleted QObject, so we can clean it up. A suitable slot signature might be:
To connect the signal to the slot, we use QObject::connect(). There are several ways to connect signal and slots. The first is to use function pointers:
There are several advantages to using QObject::connect() with function pointers. First, it allows the compiler to check that the signal's arguments are compatible with the slot's arguments. Arguments can also be implicitly converted by the compiler, if needed.
You can also connect to functors or C++11 lambdas:
In both these cases, we provide this as context in the call to connect(). The context object provides information about in which thread the receiver should be executed. This is important, as providing the context ensures that the receiver is executed in the context thread.
The lambda will be disconnected when the sender or context is destroyed. You should take care that any objects used inside the functor are still alive when the signal is emitted.
The other way to connect a signal to a slot is to use QObject::connect() and the SIGNAL and SLOT macros. The rule about whether to include arguments or not in the SIGNAL() and SLOT() macros, if the arguments have default values, is that the signature passed to the SIGNAL() macro must not have fewer arguments than the signature passed to the SLOT() macro.
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Qt Signal Slots
..because the slot will be expecting a QObject that the signal will not send. This connection will report a runtime error.
Note that signal and slot arguments are not checked by the compiler when using this QObject::connect() overload.
Advanced Signals and Slots Usage
For cases where you may require information on the sender of the signal, Qt provides the QObject::sender() function, which returns a pointer to the object that sent the signal.
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Lambda expressions are a convenient way to pass custom arguments to a slot:
Using Qt with 3rd Party Signals and Slots
It is possible to use Qt with a 3rd party signal/slot mechanism. You can even use both mechanisms in the same project. Just add the following line to your qmake project (.pro) file.
It tells Qt not to define the moc keywords signals, slots, and emit, because these names will be used by a 3rd party library, e.g. Boost. Then to continue using Qt signals and slots with the no_keywords flag, simply replace all uses of the Qt moc keywords in your sources with the corresponding Qt macros Q_SIGNALS (or Q_SIGNAL), Q_SLOTS (or Q_SLOT), and Q_EMIT.
See also QLCDNumber, QObject::connect(), Digital Clock Example, Tetrix Example, Meta-Object System, and Qt's Property System.
Qt Signal Slot Example
© 2020 The Qt Company Ltd. Documentation contributions included herein are the copyrights of their respective owners. The documentation provided herein is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3 as published by the Free Software Foundation. Qt and respective logos are trademarks of The Qt Company Ltd. in Finland and/or other countries worldwide. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.