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diff --git a/doc/src/objectmodel/objecttrees.qdoc b/doc/src/objectmodel/objecttrees.qdoc new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc5353f --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/src/objectmodel/objecttrees.qdoc @@ -0,0 +1,115 @@ +/**************************************************************************** +** +** Copyright (C) 2009 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies). +** Contact: Nokia Corporation (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 http://qt.nokia.com/contact. +** $QT_END_LICENSE$ +** +****************************************************************************/ + +/*! + \page objecttrees.html + \title Object Trees and Object Ownership + \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. +*/ |