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author | Alexis Menard <alexis.menard@nokia.com> | 2009-04-17 14:06:06 (GMT) |
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committer | Alexis Menard <alexis.menard@nokia.com> | 2009-04-17 14:06:06 (GMT) |
commit | f15b8a83e2e51955776a3f07cb85ebfc342dd8ef (patch) | |
tree | c5dc684986051654898db11ce73e03b9fec8db99 /doc/src/objecttrees.qdoc | |
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Initial import of statemachine branch from the old kinetic repository
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/src/objecttrees.qdoc')
-rw-r--r-- | doc/src/objecttrees.qdoc | 117 |
1 files changed, 117 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/src/objecttrees.qdoc b/doc/src/objecttrees.qdoc new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4b868c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/src/objecttrees.qdoc @@ -0,0 +1,117 @@ +/**************************************************************************** +** +** Copyright (C) 2009 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies). +** Contact: Qt Software Information (qt-info@nokia.com) +** +** This file is part of the documentation of the Qt Toolkit. +** +** $QT_BEGIN_LICENSE:LGPL$ +** No Commercial Usage +** This file contains pre-release code and may not be distributed. +** You may use this file in accordance with the terms and conditions +** contained in the either Technology Preview License Agreement or the +** Beta Release License Agreement. +** +** GNU Lesser General Public License Usage +** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Lesser +** General Public License version 2.1 as published by the Free Software +** Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.LGPL included in the +** packaging of this file. Please review the following information to +** ensure the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 requirements +** will be met: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html. +** +** In addition, as a special exception, Nokia gives you certain +** additional rights. These rights are described in the Nokia Qt LGPL +** Exception version 1.0, included in the file LGPL_EXCEPTION.txt in this +** package. +** +** GNU General Public License Usage +** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU +** General Public License version 3.0 as published by the Free Software +** Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.GPL included in the +** packaging of this file. Please review the following information to +** ensure the GNU General Public License version 3.0 requirements will be +** met: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. +** +** If you are unsure which license is appropriate for your use, please +** contact the sales department at qt-sales@nokia.com. +** $QT_END_LICENSE$ +** +****************************************************************************/ + +/*! +\page objecttrees.html +\title Object Trees and Object Ownership +\ingroup architecture +\brief Information about the parent-child pattern used to describe +object ownership in Qt. + +\section1 Overview + +\link QObject QObjects\endlink organize themselves in object trees. +When you create a QObject with another object as parent, it's added to +the parent's \link QObject::children() children() \endlink list, and +is deleted when the parent is. It turns out that this approach fits +the needs of GUI objects very well. For example, a \l QShortcut +(keyboard shortcut) is a child of the relevant window, so when the +user closes that window, the shorcut is deleted too. + +\l QWidget, the base class of everything that appears on the screen, +extends the parent-child relationship. A child normally also becomes a +child widget, i.e. it is displayed in its parent's coordinate system +and is graphically clipped by its parent's boundaries. For example, +when the application deletes a message box after it has been +closed, the message box's buttons and label are also deleted, just as +we'd want, because the buttons and label are children of the message +box. + +You can also delete child objects yourself, and they will remove +themselves from their parents. For example, when the user removes a +toolbar it may lead to the application deleting one of its \l QToolBar +objects, in which case the tool bar's \l QMainWindow parent would +detect the change and reconfigure its screen space accordingly. + +The debugging functions \l QObject::dumpObjectTree() and \l +QObject::dumpObjectInfo() are often useful when an application looks or +acts strangely. + +\target note on the order of construction/destruction of QObjects +\section1 Construction/Destruction Order of QObjects + +When \l {QObject} {QObjects} are created on the heap (i.e., created +with \e new), a tree can be constructed from them in any order, and +later, the objects in the tree can be destroyed in any order. When any +QObject in the tree is deleted, if the object has a parent, the +destructor automatically removes the object from its parent. If the +object has children, the destructor automatically deletes each +child. No QObject is deleted twice, regardless of the order of +destruction. + +When \l {QObject} {QObjects} are created on the stack, the same +behavior applies. Normally, the order of destruction still doesn't +present a problem. Consider the following snippet: + +\snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_objecttrees.qdoc 0 + +The parent, \c window, and the child, \c quit, are both \l {QObject} +{QObjects} because QPushButton inherits QWidget, and QWidget inherits +QObject. This code is correct: the destructor of \c quit is \e not +called twice because the C++ language standard \e {(ISO/IEC 14882:2003)} +specifies that destructors of local objects are called in the reverse +order of their constructors. Therefore, the destructor of +the child, \c quit, is called first, and it removes itself from its +parent, \c window, before the destructor of \c window is called. + +But now consider what happens if we swap the order of construction, as +shown in this second snippet: + +\snippet doc/src/snippets/code/doc_src_objecttrees.qdoc 1 + +In this case, the order of destruction causes a problem. The parent's +destructor is called first because it was created last. It then calls +the destructor of its child, \c quit, which is incorrect because \c +quit is a local variable. When \c quit subsequently goes out of scope, +its destructor is called again, this time correctly, but the damage has +already been done. + +*/ |