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These rights are described in the Nokia Qt LGPL Exception ** version 1.1, included in the file LGPL_EXCEPTION.txt in this package. ** ** If you have questions regarding the use of this file, please contact ** Nokia at qt-info@nokia.com. ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** $QT_END_LICENSE$ ** ****************************************************************************/ /*! \page widgets-tutorial.html \title Widgets Tutorial \brief This tutorial covers basic usage of widgets and layouts, showing how they are used to build GUI applications. \startpage {index.html}{Qt Reference Documentation} \contentspage Tutorials \nextpage {tutorials/widgets/toplevel}{Creating a Window} \section1 Introduction Widgets are the basic building blocks of graphical user interface (GUI) applications made with Qt. Each GUI component, such as a button, label or text editor, is a widget and can be placed within an existing user interface or displayed as an independent window. Each type of component is provided by a particular subclass of QWidget, which is itself a subclass of QObject. QWidget is not an abstract class; it can be used as a container for other widgets, and can be subclassed with minimal effort to create custom widgets. It is most often used to create windows in which other widgets are placed. As with \l{QObject}s, widgets can be created with parent objects to indicate ownership, ensuring that objects are deleted when they are no longer used. With widgets, these parent-child relationships have an additional meaning: each child is displayed within the screen area occupied by its parent. This means that, when a window is deleted, all the widgets it contains are automatically deleted. \section1 Writing a main Function Many of the GUI examples in Qt follow the pattern of having a \c{main.cpp} file containing code to initialize the application, and a number of other source and header files containing the application logic and custom GUI components. A typical \c main() function, written in \c{main.cpp}, looks like this: \snippet doc/src/snippets/widgets-tutorial/template.cpp main.cpp body We first construct a QApplication object which is configured using any arguments passed in from the command line. After any widgets have been created and shown, we call QApplication::exec() to start Qt's event loop. Control passes to Qt until this function returns, at which point we return the value we obtain from this function. In each part of this tutorial, we provide an example that is written entirely within a \c main() function. In more sophisticated examples, the code to set up widgets and layouts is written in other parts of the example. For example, the GUI for a main window may be set up in the constructor of a QMainWindow subclass. The \l{Widgets examples} are a good place to look for more complex and complete examples and applications. \section1 Building Examples and Tutorials If you obtained a binary package of Qt or compiled it yourself, the examples described in this tutorial should already be ready to run. However, if you may wish to modify them and recompile them, you need to perform the following steps: \list 1 \o At the command line, enter the directory containing the example you wish to recompile. \o Type \c qmake and press \key{Return}. If this doesn't work, make sure that the executable is on your path, or enter its full location. \o On Linux/Unix and Mac OS X, type \c make and press \key{Return}; on Windows with Visual Studio, type \c nmake and press \key{Return}. \endlist An executable file should have been created within the current directory. On Windows, this file may be located within a \c debug or \c release subdirectory. You can run this file to see the example code at work. */ /*! \page widgets-tutorial-toplevel.html \contentspage {Widgets Tutorial}{Contents} \previouspage {Widgets Tutorial} \nextpage {Widgets Tutorial - Child Widgets} \example tutorials/widgets/toplevel \title Widgets Tutorial - Creating a Window If a widget is created without a parent, it is treated as a window, or \e{top-level widget}, when it is shown. Since it has no parent object to ensure that it is deleted when no longer needed, it is up to the developer to keep track of the top-level widgets in an application. In the following example, we use QWidget to create and show a window with a default size: \raw HTML
\endraw \snippet tutorials/widgets/toplevel/main.cpp main program \raw HTML \endraw \inlineimage widgets-tutorial-toplevel.png \raw HTML
\endraw To create a real GUI, we need to place widgets inside the window. To do this, we pass a QWidget instance to a widget's constructor, as we will demonstrate in the next part of this tutorial. */ /*! \page widgets-tutorial-childwidget.html \contentspage {Widgets Tutorial}{Contents} \previouspage {Widgets Tutorial - Creating a Window} \nextpage {Widgets Tutorial - Using Layouts} \example tutorials/widgets/childwidget \title Widgets Tutorial - Child Widgets We can add a child widget to the window created in the previous example by passing \c window as the parent to its constructor. In this case, we add a button to the window and place it in a specific location: \raw HTML
\endraw \snippet tutorials/widgets/childwidget/main.cpp main program \raw HTML \endraw \inlineimage widgets-tutorial-childwidget.png \raw HTML
\endraw The button is now a child of the window and will be deleted when the window is destroyed. Note that hiding or closing the window does not automatically destroy it. It will be destroyed when the example exits. */ /*! \page widgets-tutorial-windowlayout.html \contentspage {Widgets Tutorial}{Contents} \previouspage {Widgets Tutorial - Child Widgets} \nextpage {Widgets Tutorial - Nested Layouts} \example tutorials/widgets/windowlayout \title Widgets Tutorial - Using Layouts Usually, child widgets are arranged inside a window using layout objects rather than by specifying positions and sizes explicitly. Here, we construct a label and line edit widget that we would like to arrange side-by-side. \raw HTML
\endraw \snippet tutorials/widgets/windowlayout/main.cpp main program \raw HTML \endraw \inlineimage widgets-tutorial-windowlayout.png \raw HTML
\endraw The \c layout object we construct manages the positions and sizes of widgets supplied to it with the \l{QHBoxLayout::}{addWidget()} function. The layout itself is supplied to the window itself in the call to \l{QWidget::}{setLayout()}. Layouts are only visible through the effects they have on the widgets (and other layouts) they are responsible for managing. In the example above, the ownership of each widget is not immediately clear. Since we construct the widgets and the layout without parent objects, we would expect to see an empty window and two separate windows containing a label and a line edit. However, when we tell the layout to manage the label and line edit and set the layout on the window, both the widgets and the layout itself are ''reparented'' to become children of the window. */ /*! \page widgets-tutorial-nestedlayouts.html \contentspage {Widgets Tutorial}{Contents} \previouspage {Widgets Tutorial - Using Layouts} \example tutorials/widgets/nestedlayouts \title Widgets Tutorial - Nested Layouts Just as widgets can contain other widgets, layouts can be used to provide different levels of grouping for widgets. Here, we want to display a label alongside a line edit at the top of a window, above a table view showing the results of a query. We achieve this by creating two layouts: \c{queryLayout} is a QHBoxLayout that contains QLabel and QLineEdit widgets placed side-by-side; \c{mainLayout} is a QVBoxLayout that contains \c{queryLayout} and a QTableView arranged vertically. \raw HTML
\endraw \snippet tutorials/widgets/nestedlayouts/main.cpp first part \snippet tutorials/widgets/nestedlayouts/main.cpp last part \raw HTML \endraw \inlineimage widgets-tutorial-nestedlayouts.png \raw HTML
\endraw Note that we call the \c{mainLayout}'s \l{QBoxLayout::}{addLayout()} function to insert the \c{queryLayout} above the \c{resultView} table. We have omitted the code that sets up the model containing the data shown by the QTableView widget, \c resultView. For completeness, we show this below. As well as QHBoxLayout and QVBoxLayout, Qt also provides QGridLayout and QFormLayout classes to help with more complex user interfaces. These can be seen if you run \l{Qt Designer}. \section1 Setting up the Model In the code above, we did not show where the table's data came from because we wanted to concentrate on the use of layouts. Here, we see that the model holds a number of items corresponding to rows, each of which is set up to contain data for two columns. \snippet tutorials/widgets/nestedlayouts/main.cpp set up the model The use of models and views is covered in the \l{Item Views Examples} and in the \l{Model/View Programming} overview. */