Development/Tutorials/Plasma/Python/Using widgets

Abstract

Using paintInterface to display applets is powerful, and sometimes even necessary (when you want to display SVG graphics, for example). It is not the only method available to create a Plasmoid, however. Plasma comes with a number of widgets "tailored" for using in Plasmoids. This tutorial will create a very simple "Hello, world!" Plasmoid using this approach.

Prerequisites

Set up your applet directory and create a metadata.desktop file as described in the main tutorial.

The 'main.py' file

Here's how our main.py file will look like:


 Copyright stuff

from PyQt4.QtCore import *
from PyQt4.QtGui import *
from PyKDE4.plasma import Plasma
from PyKDE4 import plasmascript
class HelloWorldApplet(plasmascript.Applet):

   def __init__(self,parent,args=None):
       
       plasmascript.Applet.__init__(self,parent)

   def init(self):

       self.setHasConfigurationInterface(False)
       self.setAspectRatioMode(Plasma.Square)

       self.theme = Plasma.Svg(self)
       self.theme.setImagePath("widgets/background")
       self.setBackgroundHints(Plasma.Applet.DefaultBackground)

       self.layout = QGraphicsLinearLayout(Qt.Horizontal, self.applet)
       label = Plasma.Label(self.applet)
       label.setText("Hello world!")
       self.layout.addItem(label)
       self.resize(125,125)

def CreateApplet(parent):

   return HelloWorldApplet(parent)