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/****************************************************************************
**
** 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.
**
** $QT_BEGIN_LICENSE:FDL$
** 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 Technology Preview License Agreement accompanying
** this package.
**
** 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 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.
\section1 Introduction
Widgets are the basic building blocks for graphical user interface
(GUI) applications built with Qt. Each GUI component (e.g.
buttons, labels, text editor) is a \l{QWidget}{widget} that is
placed somewhere within a user interface window, or is displayed
as an independent window. Each type of widge is provided by a
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 it can be subclassed with minimal effort to
create new, custom widgets. QWidget is often used to create a
window inside which other \l{QWidget}s are placed.
As with \l{QObject}s, \l{QWidget}s 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 widget is
displayed within the screen area occupied by its parent widget.
This means that when you delete a window widget, all the child
widgets it contains are also deleted.
\section1 Writing a main Function
Many of the GUI examples provided with Qt follow the pattern of
having a \c{main.cpp} file, which contains the standard code to
initialize the application, plus any number of other source/header
files that contain the application logic and custom GUI components.
A typical \c main() function in \c{main.cpp} looks like this:
\snippet doc/src/snippets/widgets-tutorial/template.cpp main.cpp body
First, a QApplication object is constructed, which can be
configured with arguments passed in from the command line. After
the widgets have been created and shown, QApplication::exec() is
called to start Qt's event loop. Control passes to Qt until this
function returns. Finally, \c{main()} returns the value returned
by QApplication::exec().
\section1 Simple widget examples
Each of theses simple widget examples is written entirely within
the \c main() function.
\list
\o \l {tutorials/widgets/toplevel} {Creating a window}
\o \l {tutorials/widgets/childwidget} {Creating child widgets}
\o \l {tutorials/widgets/windowlayout} {Using layouts}
\o \l {tutorials/widgets/nestedlayouts} {Nested layouts}
\endlist
\section1 Real world widget examples
In these \l{Widget examples} {more advanced examples}, the code
that creates the widgets and layouts is stored in other files. For
example, the GUI for a main window may be created in the
constructor of a QMainWindow subclass.
\section1 Building The Examples
If you installed a binary package to get Qt, or if you compiled Qt
yourself, the examples described in this tutorial should already
be built and ready to run. If you wish to modify and recompile
them, follow these steps:
\list 1
\o From a command prompt, enter the directory containing the
example you have modified.
\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 is created in the current directory. On
Windows, this file may be located in a \c debug or \c release
subdirectory. You can run this executable to see the example code
at work.
*/
/*!
\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
<table align="left" width="100%">
<tr class="qt-code"><td>
\endraw
\snippet tutorials/widgets/toplevel/main.cpp main program
\raw HTML
</td><td align="right">
\endraw
\inlineimage widgets-tutorial-toplevel.png
\raw HTML
</td></tr>
</table>
\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.
*/
/*!
\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
<table align="left" width="100%">
<tr class="qt-code"><td>
\endraw
\snippet tutorials/widgets/childwidget/main.cpp main program
\raw HTML
</td><td align="right">
\endraw
\inlineimage widgets-tutorial-childwidget.png
\raw HTML
</td></tr>
</table>
\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.
*/
/*!
\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
<table align="left" width="100%">
<tr class="qt-code"><td>
\endraw
\snippet tutorials/widgets/windowlayout/main.cpp main program
\raw HTML
</td><td align="right">
\endraw
\inlineimage widgets-tutorial-windowlayout.png
\raw HTML
</td></tr>
</table>
\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.
*/
/*!
\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
<table align="left" width="100%">
<tr class="qt-code"><td>
\endraw
\snippet tutorials/widgets/nestedlayouts/main.cpp first part
\snippet tutorials/widgets/nestedlayouts/main.cpp last part
\raw HTML
</td><td align="right">
\endraw
\inlineimage widgets-tutorial-nestedlayouts.png
\raw HTML
</td></tr>
</table>
\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.
*/
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