/**************************************************************************** ** ** Copyright (C) 2010 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies). ** All rights reserved. ** Contact: Nokia Corporation (qt-info@nokia.com) ** ** This file is part of the documentation of the Qt Toolkit. ** ** $QT_BEGIN_LICENSE:FDL$ ** Commercial Usage ** Licensees holding valid Qt Commercial licenses may use this file in ** accordance with the Qt Commercial License Agreement provided with the ** Software or, alternatively, in accordance with the terms contained in a ** written agreement between you and Nokia. ** ** GNU Free Documentation License ** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Free ** Documentation License version 1.3 as published by the Free Software ** Foundation and appearing in the file included in the packaging of this ** file. ** ** If you have questions regarding the use of this file, please contact ** Nokia at qt-info@nokia.com. ** $QT_END_LICENSE$ ** ****************************************************************************/ /*! \page qml-integration.html \title Integrating QML with existing Qt UI code There are a number of ways to integrate QML into QWidget-based UI applications, depending on the characteristics of your existing UI code. \section1 Integrating with a \l{QWidget}-based UI If you have an existing QWidget-based UI, QML widgets can be integrated into it using QDeclarativeView. QDeclarativeView is a subclass of QWidget so you can add it to your user interface like any other QWidget. Use QDeclarativeView::setSource() to load a QML file into the view, then add the view to your UI: \code QDeclarativeView *qmlView = new QDeclarativeView; qmlView->setSource(QUrl::fromLocalFile("myqml.qml")); QWidget *widget = myExistingWidget(); QVBoxLayout *layout = new QVBoxLayout(widget); widget->addWidget(qmlView); \endcode The one drawback to this approach is that QDeclarativeView is slower to initialize and uses more memory than a QWidget, and creating large numbers of QDeclarativeView objects may lead to performance degradation. If this is the case, it may be better to rewrite your widgets in QML, and load the widgets from a main QML widget instead of using QDeclarativeView. Keep in mind that QWidgets were designed for a different type of user interface than QML, so it is not always a good idea to port a QWidget-based application to QML. QWidgets are a better choice if your UI is comprised of a small number of complex and static elements, and QML is a better choice if your UI is comprised of a large number of simple and dynamic elements. \section1 Integrating with a QGraphicsView-based UI \section2 Adding QML widgets to a QGraphicsScene If you have an existing UI based on the \l{Graphics View Framework}, you can integrate QML widgets directly into your QGraphicsScene. Use QDeclarativeComponent to create a QGraphicsObject from a QML file, and place the graphics object into your scene using \l{QGraphicsScene::addItem()}, or reparent it to an item already in the \l{QGraphicsScene}. For example: \code QGraphicsScene* scene = myExistingGraphicsScene(); QDeclarativeEngine *engine = new QDeclarativeEngine; QDeclarativeComponent component(engine, QUrl::fromLocalFile("myqml.qml")); QGraphicsObject *object = qobject_cast(component.create()); scene->addItem(object); \endcode The following QGraphicsView options are recommended for optimal performance of QML UIs: \list \o QGraphicsView::setOptimizationFlags(QGraphicsView::DontSavePainterState) \o QGraphicsView::setViewportUpdateMode(QGraphicsView::BoundingRectViewportUpdate) \o QGraphicsScene::setItemIndexMethod(QGraphicsScene::NoIndex) \endlist \section2 Loading QGraphicsWidget objects in QML An alternative approach is to expose your existing QGraphicsWidget objects to QML and construct your scene in QML instead. See the \l {declarative-cppextensions-qgraphicslayouts.html}{graphics layouts example} which shows how to expose Qt's graphics layout classes to QML in order to use QGraphicsWidget with classes like QGraphicsLinearLayout and QGraphicsGridLayout. To expose your existing QGraphicsWidget classes to QML, use \l {qmlRegisterType()}. See \l{Extending QML in C++} for further information on using C++ types in QML. */