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diff --git a/doc/src/declarative/network.qdoc b/doc/src/declarative/network.qdoc new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ed20e66e --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/src/declarative/network.qdoc @@ -0,0 +1,167 @@ +/**************************************************************************** +** +** 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 qmlnetwork.html +\title Network Transparency + +QML supports network transparency by using URLs (rather than file names) for all +references from a QML document to other content: + +\qml +Image { + source: "http://www.example.com/images/logo.png" +} +\endqml + +Since a \e relative URL is the same +as a relative file, development of QML on regular file systems remains simple: + +\qml +Image { + source: "images/logo.png" +} +\endqml + +Network transparency is supported throughout QML, for example: + +\list +\o Scripts - the \c source property of \l Script is a URL +\o Fonts - the \c source property of FontLoader is a URL +\o WebViews - the \c url property of WebView (obviously!) +\endlist + +Even QML types themselves can be on the network - if \l qmlviewer is used to load +\tt http://example.com/mystuff/Hello.qml and that content refers to a type "World", this +will load from \tt http://example.com/mystuff/World.qml just as it would for a local file. +Any other resources that \tt Hello.qml referred to, usually by a relative URL, would +similarly be loaded from the network. + + +\section1 Relative vs. Absolute URLs + +Whenever an object has a property of type URL (QUrl), assigning a string to that +property will actually assign an absolute URL - by resolving the string against +the URL of the document where the string is used. + +For example, consider this content in \tt{http://example.com/mystuff/test.qml}: + +\qml +Image { + source: "images/logo.png" +} +\endqml + +The \l Image source property will be assigned \tt{http://example.com/mystuff/images/logo.png}, +but while the QML is being developed, in say \tt C:\\User\\Fred\\Documents\\MyStuff\\test.qml, it will be assigned +\tt C:\\User\\Fred\\Documents\\MyStuff\\images\\logo.png. + +If the string assigned to a URL is already an absolute URL, then "resolving" does +not change it and the URL is assigned directly. + + +\section1 Progressive Loading + +Because of the declarative nature of QML and the asynchronous nature of network resources, +objects which reference network resource generally change state as the network resource loads. +For example, an Image with a network source will initially have +a \c width and \c height of 0, a \c status of \c Loading, and a \c progress of 0.0. +While the content loads, the \c progress will increase until +the content is fully loaded from the network, +at which point the \c width and \c height become the content size, the \c status becomes \c Ready, and the \c progress reaches 1.0. +Applications can bind to these changing states to provide visual progress indicators where appropriate, or simply +bind to the \c width and \c height as if the content was a local file, adapting as those bound values change. + +Note that when objects reference local files they immediately have the \c Ready status, but applications wishing +to remain network transparent should not rely on this. Future versions of QML may also use asynchronous local file I/O +to improve performance. + + +\section1 Accessing Network Services + +QML types such as XmlListModel, and JavaScript classes like XMLHttpRequest are intended +entirely for accessing network services, which usually respond with references to +content by URLs that can then be used directly in QML. For example, using these facilities +to access an on-line photography service would provide the QML application with URLs to +photographs, which can be directly set on an \l Image \c source property. + +See the \tt demos/declarative/flickr for a real demonstration of this. + + +\section1 Configuring the Network Access Manager + +All network access from QML is managed by a QNetworkAccessManager set on the QmlEngine which executes the QML. +By default, this is an unmodified Qt QNetworkAccessManager. You may set a different manager using +QmlEngine::setNetworkAccessManager() as appropriate for the policies of your application. +For example, the \l qmlviewer tool sets a new QNetworkAccessManager which +trusts HTTP Expiry headers to avoid network cache checks, allows HTTP Pipelining, adds a persistent HTTP CookieJar, +a simple disk cache, and supports proxy settings. + + +\section1 QRC Resources + +One of the URL schemes built into Qt is the "qrc" scheme. This allows content to be compiled into +the executable using \l{The Qt Resource System}. Using this, an executable can reference QML content +that is compiled into the executable: + +\code + QmlView *canvas = new QmlView; + canvas->setUrl(QUrl("qrc:/dial.qml")); +\endcode + +The content itself can then use relative URLs, and so be transparently unaware that the content is +compiled into the executable. + + +\section1 Limitations + +The \c import statement is only network transparent if it has an "as" clause. + +More specifically: +\list +\o \c{import "dir"} only works on local file systems +\o \c{import libraryUri} only works on local file systems +\o \c{import "dir" as D} works network transparently +\o \c{import libraryUrl as U} works network transparently +\endlist + + +*/ |