xgvargas/smartside

Make PySide act a little smarter.

SmartSide is one of many available ways to have PySide signals connected in a easy way.

Example of what it can do for you

Suppose you have designed a GUI using Qt Designer

Compile it with:

$ pyside-uic.exe myform.ui -o myform_ui.py

# if you have resources included compile them too
$ pyside-rcc.exe myresources.qrc -o myresources_rc.py

Then use a code like this to show your form and bind some signals:

import sys
from myform_ui import *   # this will also include `QtCore` and `QtGui`
import smartside.signal as smartsignal

class MyApplication(QtGui.QMainWindow, Ui_MainWindow, smartsignal.SmartSignal):
    def __init__(self, parent=None):
        super(MyApplication, self).__init__(parent)
        self.setupUi(self)

        # create any local UI object here, so they signal are
        # going to be auto-connected too

        self.auto_connect()

    # will respond to stateChanged signal from checkBox widget
    # notice the double underline between widget name and signal name
    def _on_checkBox__stateChanged(self):
        print 'check', self.sender().isChecked()

    # will respond to `pressed` signal of btn_add widget
    def _on_btn_add__pressed(self):
        print 'btn_add was pressed'

    # list some widgets and use regex `regex`, to select multiples.
    # starting with underline is mandatory
    _myfuncs = 'btn_base, btn_format, `btn_.+log.+`, btn_sqr'
    # will respond to clicked signal of all widget listed above
    def _when_myfuncs__clicked(self):
        print 'multiples', self.sender()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
    window = MyApplication()
    window.show()

    # uncomment line below to print a list of ALL signals available on your form
    # window.print_all_signals()

    sys.exit(app.exec_())

Your form is supposed to be called Ui_MainWindow in this example.

First we use setupUi as usual to create the interface.

Then auto_connect will connect member functions to signals when they match.

The last case use a multiple connection, so more then one widgets will call the same callback function. You can also use regex to select related widgets. In the example above we have selected a few widgets by its explicit name and also all widget whose name starts with 'btn\_' and have 'log' in some part of its name. All of them are going to be connected to _when_myfuncs__clicked.

Yes, it works with actions too. Like def _on_actionTest__triggered(self):. This is usefull when you create context menu by code. Just remember to call auto_connect after menu creation.

Show icon on Windows taskbar

Usually Windows 7+ executes Python scripts as a group and put every icon you define to your GUI as a child of Python's taskbar icon, since python actually hosts your code. This happens even if you give .pyw as extension for your python script.

To solve this you have to tell Windows your script is an application by calling smartside.setAsApplication() and pass to this function an unique identifier for your script, like: 'company.product.version'.

# ....

if __name__ == "__main__":

    from smartside import setAsApplication
    setAsApplication('example_co.exampleProd.'+__version__)

    app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
    window = MyApplication()
    window.show()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

Console Widget

Using Qt Designer promote a QPlainTextEdit to ConsoleWidget, and use smartside.console as header (source).

Then, inside __init__ of this form use: self.name_of_widget.setLocals({'name': object, 'me': self}).

This will make the promoted QPlainTextEdit to become a python console with access to two objects: name and me.

Language

The function getBestTranslation is used to discover the best translation file available for an app.

It will look in a folder for a .qm file in the following order:

• en-US.qm
• en_US.qm
• en.qm

You can specify a list of desired languages or let the function to check the system languages. If no translation is found the native language will be used.

# ....

if __name__ == "__main__":

    from smartside import getBestTranslation

    # this will look for translations inside folder ./i18n
    # it will search by system languages
    translator = getBestTranslation('i18n')

    app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
    app.installTranslator(translator)

    window = MyApp()
    window.show()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

# if you want to specify the languages
translator = getBestTranslation('language', ['pt-BR', 'es'])

In this case it will try:

• language/pt-BR.qm
• language/pt_BR.qm
• language/pt.qm
• language/es.qm

Change History

0.1.7:	Added language locator.
0.1.6:	Fixed setup typo.
0.1.5:	Added support to python 3.
0.1.4:	Added ConsoleWidget class.
0.1.3:	Added setAsApplication.
0.1.2:	Added QAction support; For every QAction created before calling auto_connect() you can use def _on_action_name__clicked(self): like you do with signals.
0.1.1:	Small fix.

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Development:

https://github.com/xgvargas/smartside - please use this space if you found a problem or think any other task on PySide can be simplified.

smartside's Issues

Missing imports from smartside.py

smartside.py has the following import statement :-

from PySide.QtCore import Signal

Calling print_signals_and_slots() then raises an exception because it has neither the QMetaMethod not the SIGNAL import.

Changing the import statement to :-

from PySide.QtCore import Signal, QMetaMethod, SIGNAL

works. I don't know if it is optimal.

Documentation isn't quite as clear as it could be

The documentation says :-

Just remember to call auto_create after menu creation.

It's not clear what to call auto_create() on; I can't find any objects that have that method.

Could you clarify this, please? I'm trying to create my UI with QUiLoader, and it's not getting any menu actions.