/*! \page qmlintroduction.html \title Introduction to the QML language \tableofcontents \section1 What is QML? QML is a declarative language designed to describe the user interface of a program: both what it looks like and how it behaves. In QML, a user interface is specified as a tree of objects with properties. \section1 What should I know before starting? This introduction is meant for those with little or no programming experience. JavaScript is used as a scripting language in QML, so you may want to learn a bit more about it (\l{JavaScript: The Definitive Guide}) before diving too deep into QML. It's also helpful to have a basic understanding of other web technologies like HTML and CSS, but not required. \section1 Basic QML Syntax QML looks like this: \code Rectangle { width: 200 height: 200 color: "white" Image { source: "pics/logo.png" anchors.centerIn: parent } } \endcode Objects are specified by their type, followed by a pair of braces. Object types always begin with a capital letter. In the above example, there are two objects, a \l Rectangle, and an \l Image. Between the braces, we can specify information about the object, such as its properties. Properties are specified as \c {property: value} (much like CSS). In the above example, we can see the Image has a property named \e source, which has been assigned the value \e "pics/logo.png". The property and its value are separated by a colon. Properties can be specified one-per-line: \code Rectangle { width: 100 height: 100 } \endcode or you can put multiple properties on a single line: \code Rectangle { width: 100; height: 100 } \endcode When multiple property/value pairs are specified on a single line, they must be separated by a semicolon. \section1 Expressions In addition to assigning values to properties, you can also assign expressions written in JavaScript. \code Rotation { angle: 360*3 } \endcode These expressions can include references to other objects and properties, in which case a \e binding is established: when the value of the expression changes, the property the expression has been assigned to is automatically updated to that value. \code Item { Text { id: Text1 text: "Hello World" } Text { id: Text2 text: Text1.text } } \endcode In the example above, the Text2 object will display the same text as Text1. If Text1 is updated, Text2 will be updated as well. Note that to refer to other objects, we use their \e id (more information on the id property can be found in a following section). \section1 QML Comments Commenting in QML is similar to JavaScript. \list \o Single line comments begin with // and end at the end of the line. \o Multiline comments begin with /* and end with *\/ \endlist \quotefile doc/src/snippets/declarative/comments.qml Comments are ignored by the engine. The are useful for explaining what you are doing: for referring back to at a later date, or for others reading your QML files. Comments can also be used to prevent the execution of code, which is sometimes useful for tracking down problems. \code Text { text: "Hello world!" //opacity: 0.5 } \endcode In the above example, the Text object will have normal opacity, since the line opacity: 0.5 has been turned into a comment. \section1 Properties \section2 Property naming Properties begin with a lowercase letter (with the exception of \l{Attached Properties}). \section2 Property types QML supports properties of many types (\l{Common QML Types}). The basic types include int, real, bool, string, color, and lists. \code Item { x: 10.5 // a 'real' property ... state: "Details" // a 'string' property focus: true // a 'bool' property } \endcode QML properties are what is known as \e typesafe. That is, they only allow you to assign a value that matches the property type. For example, the scale property of item is a real, and if you try to assign a string to it you will get an error. \badcode Item { scale: "hello" //illegal! } \endcode \section3 The 'id' property The id property is a special property of type \e id. Assigning an id to an object allows you to refer to it elsewhere. \code Item { Text { id: MyName text: "..." } Text { text: MyName.text } } \endcode ids must begin with a letter. We recommended that you start your ids with a capital letter. \section2 List properties List properties look like this: \code Item { children: [ Image {}, Text {} ] } \endcode The list is enclosed in square brackets, with a comma separating the list elements. In cases where you are only assigning a single item to a list, you can omit the square brackets: \code Image { children: Rectangle {} } \endcode \section2 Default properties Each object type can specify one of it's list properties as its default property. If a list property has been the default property, it means the property tag can emitted: \code State { operations: [ SetProperties {}, SetProperties {} ] } \endcode can be simplified to \code State { SetProperties {} SetProperties {} } \endcode \section2 Dot Properties \section2 Attached Properties \target attached-properties \section2 Signal Handlers */