Develop Reference

PyQt5 Widget Disappears When No Breakpoint is Used

Don't critisize me using different classes - the reasons for his is becausethere will be more GUIs in my project created by the QtDesigner, but this should not be important for now.
In general, I have two Python scripts:
main.py:
from PyQt5 import QtCore, QtWidgets, QtGui
import sys
import time
from gui_class import Gui
app = QtWidgets.QApplication(sys.argv)
gui = Gui()
sys.exit(app.exec_())
gui_class.py:
from PyQt5 import QtWidgets
class Gui():
def __init__(self):
w = QtWidgets.QWidget()
w.resize(500, 500)
self.button = QtWidgets.QPushButton(w)
self.button.setGeometry(100, 100, 300, 300)
w.show()
If I run the main.py-script, then the window appears for a split second and disappears right away. I can't see it, I can't click it. The code does not terminate, though. It's still waiting for the application to finish - I can't do anything, though.
If I put a breakpoint before the line saying w.show() in the gui_class.py and simply continue the code after it stopped in that line, then the GUI is visible and I can click the button and the code terminates after I close the window - everything works as expected.
I am using PyQt5: 5.15.2 with Python3.7.

The problem is that w is a local variable that will be destroyed when the scope where it was created finishes executing. The solution is to extend its life cycle by increasing its scope by making it an attribute of the class, for this you must change w with self.w.

PyQt setText not rendering text properly in MacOs

I am creating an application using PyQt5 (pythyon 3.7 , MacOs X)
When I modify the text in a textbox using the instruction
self.line_main.setText(final_text)
from a function (which is connected to a push button)
The new text does not render properly in the textbox (see screenshot) and both the old and new text are overlapping in a strange way.
An over-simplified code to illustrate the problem is this one:
import sys
from PyQt5 import QtCore, QtWidgets
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QMainWindow, QWidget, QLabel, QLineEdit
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QPushButton
from PyQt5.QtCore import QSize
class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
def __init__(self):
QMainWindow.__init__(self)
self.setMinimumSize(QSize(200, 200))
self.setWindowTitle("PyQt test")
self.line_main = QLineEdit(self)
self.line_main.move(20,20)
bt_upperCase = QPushButton('Upper Case', self)
bt_upperCase.move(20, 60)
bt_upperCase.clicked.connect(self.click_upCase)
def click_upCase(self):
final_text=self.line_main.text().upper()
self.line_main.setText(final_text)
if __name__ == "__main__":
app = QtWidgets.QApplication(sys.argv)
mainWin = MainWindow()
mainWin.show()
sys.exit( app.exec_() )
screenshot of mini-app, with 're' as input as 'RE' as output
The same thing may happen for labels, although at times, only the old text is visible, and I need to select the text with the mouse or resize the main window to 'refresh' the textbox and see the new value.
The problem does not happen if I run the code in a PC, only in MacOs (tested in High Sierra and Mojave with identical results)
Some weird behaviours are:
If position the textbox at the (0,0) position in the main window, which is not very practical, then the setText functions correctly. In some other locations of the box, too, but only if it is very close to the top-left corner, and no other element is near.
If I modify the textbox value at the initialization of the main window, then it renders correctly in all cases, The problem appears when you try to do it from a function (after clicking a button, for instance), like in the code attached.
The problem does not happen if I run the code in a PC, only in MacOs (tested in High Sierra and Mojave with identical results)
If position the textbox at the (0,0) position in the main window, (which is not very practical), then the setText functions correctly. In some other locations of the box, too, but only if it is very close to the top-left corner, and no other element is near.
Does anyone have a guess why this may happen, and how could it be solved?
UPDATE.
The problem dissapears if i run the code with python 3.6 in a conda installation (PyQt version 5.9.2). Still very intrigued to know what caused the problem.

PySide program closes instantly

I'm trying to learn PySide for a project I'm working on. I'm working through the Zetcode tutorials, but from the very beginning I'm running problems. I am writing and running my code through Enthought's Canopy. When I run the code from the command line it works fine. This question may be related to my issue, however no answer is given there.
When I use the simplest code from the tutorial
import sys
from PySide import QtGui
wid = QtGui.QWidget()
wid.resize(250, 150)
wid.setWindowTitle('Simple')
wid.show()
everything runs correctly. The next example does more or less the same, except from an OOP perspective.
import sys
from PySide import QtGui
class Example(QtGui.QWidget):
def __init__(self):
super(Example, self).__init__()
self.initUI()
def initUI(self):
self.setGeometry(300, 300, 250, 150)
self.setWindowTitle('Icon')
self.setWindowIcon(QtGui.QIcon('web.png'))
self.show()
def main():
ex = Example()
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
When run the program flashes (I can see the window appear for a brief second) and then closes. Raising an exception before the end of main() will keep the window on the screen.
TL;DR
Why does putting the program in a class make it not work?

The difference between the two examples, is that first one keeps a reference to the widget as a global variable, whilst the second creates a local variable that gets garbage-collected when it goes out of scope (i.e. when the function returns).
The simplest way to fix this, is to make the ex variable global, like this:
def main():
global ex
ex = Example()
or you could just get rid of the main function, and simply do:
if __name__ == '__main__':
ex = Example()

The difference between running in and out of Canopy is that Canopy uses IPython QTConsole running, by default, in pylab mode with a QT GUI backend. The nice thing about this (and one of the many geniuses of ipython) is that you can have a live interaction between the command prompt and your GUI).
I suspect that you are bumping into pylab. A sophisticated program like Matplotlib can figure out whether the GUI event loop was already started, and adapt accordingly. But for your purpose, you probably just want to disable pylab mode, so that the IPython in Canopy acts more like a generic python. To do this, disable Pylab mode from the Canopy Preference menu (Python tab).

Correct way to address Pyside Qt widgets from a .ui file via Python

I have created a GUI with Qt Designer and accessed it via
def loadUiWidget(uifilename, parent=None):
loader = QtUiTools.QUiLoader()
uifile = QtCore.QFile(uifilename)
uifile.open(QtCore.QFile.ReadOnly)
ui = loader.load(uifile, parent)
uifile.close()
return ui
MainWindow = loadUiWidget("form.ui")
MainWindow.show()
children = MainWindow.children()
button1 = MainWindow.QPushButton1
"children" does already contain the widgets "QPushButton1", "QTextBrowser1" created in the UI but shouldn't the be accessed by the recoursive findChildren() method?
What is an elegant way to access the widgets of the .ui File?
References:
Find correct instance,
Load .ui file

Since widget names in Qt Designer must be unique, the hierarchy (at least for getting references to the widgets) is flattened (with no risk of conflict), and so the best way is just to access them via:
loader = QtUiTools.QUiLoader()
ui = loader.load('filename.ui', parent)
my_widget = ui.my_widget_name
This would place a reference to the widget called 'my_widget_name' in Qt Designer in the variable my_widget.
I would say the above is the most pythonic way of accessing the widgets created when you load the .ui file.

There are two disadvantages of loading UI at run time:
overhead each time the program is run (actually, each time the loader is used)
lack of support of code completion and checking, since IDE doesn't know the code behind ui until the uifile has been loaded.
An alternative, assuming you are using the modern version of PySide called "Qt for Python", is to "compile" the .ui file to a Python class (see docs). For this, after saving filename.ui, execute
pyside2-uic filename.ui -o ui_mainwindow.py
while within your virtual environment, if any. The new class will be called Ui_MainWindow. Assuming you have a text_box widget in your UI, you can now access its properties and methods. Here is a full working example:
import sys
from PySide2.QtWidgets import QApplication, QMainWindow
from ui_mainwindow import Ui_MainWindow
class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
def __init__(self):
super(MainWindow, self).__init__()
self.ui = Ui_MainWindow()
self.ui.setupUi(self)
self.ui.text_box.setPlainText('test') # here we are addressing widget
if __name__ == "__main__":
app = QApplication(sys.argv)
window = MainWindow()
window.show()
sys.exit(app.exec_())
Notes:
pyside2-uic should be called after every change of the .ui file. This is a disadvantage of this approach in comparison to OP. It also means that you should either version-control both .ui and .py files for your UI, or somehow call uic during deployment.
The big advantage is that IDE like PyCharm has access to all widget methods and properties for autocompletion and code checking.
As of today, pyside2-uic creates non-PEP8 compliant code. However, as long as you give your widgets PEP8-compliant names, your own code will be OK.

Initialization completed event in QT4 GUI

I have a QT4 and python 2.4 based GUI. The user starts using it by opening a file. In addition to explicit browsing, I would like to allow the user to specify a file to open as a command line argument. I am looking for some event in the QMainWindow (or wherever) that would allow me to detect when the application completed its initialization and is ready for user interaction at which point I could automatically open the file and populate the widgets. So far I could not find anything better than overriding showEvent which is not exactly it because the main window is still not visible at this point. It might be okay but I am looking for a proper way to do this. In some other UI toolkits that I have used in the past that would be something like “main form layout completed” event that would signal that the UI is safe to deal with. Is there something similar in QT4? I am running this on Linux if that matters.
You insights are greatly appreciated.

You don't need an event here. It is guaranteed that everything is loaded after __init__() and show() have run, so you can just put your code for the file opening after that.
import sys
from PyQt4 import QtGui
class Example(QtGui.QWidget):
def __init__(self):
super(Example, self).__init__()
self.setupUI()
self.show()
# normal __init__ done
if len(sys.argv) > 1:
with open(sys.argv[1]) as f:
# do stuff with file
if __name__ == '__main__':
app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
ex = Example()
sys.exit(app.exec_())