Qt5 Signal Slot Overload

1. Qt5 Signal Slot Overload Relay
2. Qt5 Signal Slot Overload Tool
3. Qt5 Signal Slot Overload Circuit
4. Qt5 Signal Slot Overload Sensor

Introduction

While being better in many regards, the new connection syntax in Qt5 has one Qt Connecting overloaded signals/slots Example While being better in many regards, the new connection syntax in Qt5 has one big weakness: Connecting overloaded signals and slots. The problem here is that there are two signals with that name: QSpinBox::valueChanged(int) and QSpinBox::valueChanged(QString).From Qt 5.7, there are helper functions provided to select the desired overload, so you can write. Connecting overloaded signals/slots. While being better in many regards, the new connection syntax in Qt5 has one big weakness: Connecting overloaded signals and slots. In order to let the compiler resolve the overloads we need to use staticcasts to member function pointers, or (starting in Qt 5.7) qOverload and friends.

Remarks

Official documentation on this topic can be found here.

A Small Example

Signals and slots are used for communication between objects. The signals and slots mechanism is a central feature of Qt and probably the part that differs most from the features provided by other frameworks.

The minimal example requires a class with one signal, one slot and one connection:

counter.h

The main sets a new value. We can check how the slot is called, printing the value.

Qt5 Signal Slot Overload Relay

Finally, our project file:

Connecting overloaded signals/slots

While being better in many regards, the new connection syntax in Qt5 has one big weakness: Connecting overloaded signals and slots. In order to let the compiler resolve the overloads we need to use static_casts to member function pointers, or (starting in Qt 5.7) qOverload and friends:

Multi window signal slot connection

A simple multiwindow example using signals and slots.

There is a MainWindow class that controls the Main Window view. A second window controlled by Website class.

The two classes are connected so that when you click a button on the Website window something happens in the MainWindow (a text label is changed).

I made a simple example that is also on GitHub:

mainwindow.h

mainwindow.cpp

website.h

website.cpp

Project composition:

Telefono casino gran canals. Consider the Uis to be composed:

• Main Window: a label called 'text' and a button called 'openButton'
• Website Window: a button called 'changeButton'

So the keypoints are the connections between signals and slots and the management of windows pointers or references.

The new Qt5 connection syntax

The conventional connect syntax that uses SIGNAL and SLOT macros works entirely at runtime, which has two drawbacks: it has some runtime overhead (resulting also in binary size overhead), and there's no compile-time correctness checking. The new syntax addresses both issues. Before checking the syntax in an example, we'd better know what happens in particular.

Let's say we are building a house and we want to connect the cables. This is exactly what connect function does. Signals and slots are the ones needing this connection. The point is if you do one connection, you need to be careful about the further overlaping connections. Whenever you connect a signal to a slot, you are trying to tell the compiler that whenever the signal was emitted, simply invoke the slot function. This is what exactly happens.

Here's a sample main.cpp:

Hint: the old syntax (SIGNAL/SLOT macros) requires that the Qt metacompiler (MOC) is run for any class that has either slots or signals. From the coding standpoint that means that such classes need to have the Q_OBJECT macro (which indicates the necessity to run MOC on this class).

The minimal example requires a class with one signal, one slot and one connection:

counter.h

The main sets a new value. We can check how the slot is called, printing the value.

Qt5 Signal Slot Overload Relay

Finally, our project file:

Connecting overloaded signals/slots

While being better in many regards, the new connection syntax in Qt5 has one big weakness: Connecting overloaded signals and slots. In order to let the compiler resolve the overloads we need to use static_casts to member function pointers, or (starting in Qt 5.7) qOverload and friends:

Multi window signal slot connection

A simple multiwindow example using signals and slots.

There is a MainWindow class that controls the Main Window view. A second window controlled by Website class.

The two classes are connected so that when you click a button on the Website window something happens in the MainWindow (a text label is changed).

I made a simple example that is also on GitHub:

mainwindow.h

mainwindow.cpp

website.h

website.cpp

Project composition:

Telefono casino gran canals. Consider the Uis to be composed:

• Main Window: a label called 'text' and a button called 'openButton'
• Website Window: a button called 'changeButton'

So the keypoints are the connections between signals and slots and the management of windows pointers or references.

The new Qt5 connection syntax

The conventional connect syntax that uses SIGNAL and SLOT macros works entirely at runtime, which has two drawbacks: it has some runtime overhead (resulting also in binary size overhead), and there's no compile-time correctness checking. The new syntax addresses both issues. Before checking the syntax in an example, we'd better know what happens in particular.

Let's say we are building a house and we want to connect the cables. This is exactly what connect function does. Signals and slots are the ones needing this connection. The point is if you do one connection, you need to be careful about the further overlaping connections. Whenever you connect a signal to a slot, you are trying to tell the compiler that whenever the signal was emitted, simply invoke the slot function. This is what exactly happens.

Here's a sample main.cpp:

Hint: the old syntax (SIGNAL/SLOT macros) requires that the Qt metacompiler (MOC) is run for any class that has either slots or signals. From the coding standpoint that means that such classes need to have the Q_OBJECT macro (which indicates the necessity to run MOC on this class).

The new syntax, on the other hand, still requires MOC for signals to work, but not for slots. If a class only has slots and no signals, it need not have the Q_OBJECT macro and hence may not invoke the MOC, which not only reduces the final binary size but also reduces compilation time (no MOC call and no subsequent compiler call for the generated *_moc.cpp file).

And now we will go deeper into the work with Qt using PyQt5, taking advantage of modern Qt features. By such possibilities I mean QtQuick and QML. PyQt5 allows you to use Qt classes that can process QML code, and therefore you can write an interface to QML, and also send signals to the QML layer and invoke slots of objects inherited from QObject from the QML layer.

To get meet with such possibilities of PyQt5, we will write a program that implements the following tasks:

• The program interface should be written in QML
• A class inherited from QObject and written in python must be implemented, with which we will interact from QML
• An application using this class will need to add and subtract integers

Appearance of the application should look like this:

Project structure

Qt5 Signal Slot Overload Tool

There will be only two files in the project:

• __main__.py - File application in python, there will also be a class for calculations
• main.qml - Interface file on QML

Signals in PyQt5

The signal signature in the general case will look like this:

PyQt5.QtCore.pyqtSignal ( types [, name [, revision=0 [, arguments=[] ]]])

Create one or more overloaded unbound signals as a class attribute.

Slots in PyQt5

To define slots in PyQt5, a special decorator is used.

Qt5 Signal Slot Overload Circuit

PyQt5.QtCore.pyqtSlot ( types [, name [, result [, revision=0 ]]])

Qt5 Signal Slot Overload Sensor

__main__.py

main.qml