This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Dynamic Dialogs
Dynamic dialogs are dialogs that are created from Qt Designer .ui files at run-time. Instead of converting the .ui file to C++ code using uic, we can load the file at run-time using the QUiLoader class:
QUiLoader uiLoader;
QFile file("sortdialog.ui");
QWidget *sortDialog = uiLoader.load(&file);
if (sortDialog) {
...
}
We can access the form's child widgets using QObject::findChild<T>():
QComboBox *primaryColumnCombo =
sortDialog->findChild<QComboBox *>("primaryColumnCombo");
if (primaryColumnCombo) {
...
}
The findChild<T>() function is a template member function that returns the child object that matches the given name and type. Because of a compiler limitation, it is not available for MSVC 6. If you need to use the MSVC 6 compiler, call the qFindChild<T>() global function instead, which works in essentially the same way.
The QUiLoader class is located in a separate library. To use QUiLoader from a Qt application, we must add this line to the application's .pro file:
CONFIG += uitools
Dynamic dialogs make it possible to change the layout of a form without recompiling the application. They can also be used to create thin-client applications, where the executable merely has a front-end form built-in and all other forms are created as required.