Ruby-Qt/KDE Book

Tutorial Series	Ruby
Previous	Installation on Linux, Installation on Mac OS or Installation on Windows
What's Next	n/a
Further Reading	Signals and Slots-Concept

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noframe

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TODO:

improve writing style and remove spelling mistakes

Status Of Writing

After all you should have a working ruby installation with KDE 4 bindings.

So lets try the a very minimalistic Qt 4 application to get a first impression. We don't start with KDE, because it would require some extra lines, that are not necessary when using Qt.

Hello Ruby

Interactive Implementation Using Qt 4

Open a shell and type in irb to start the interactive ruby shell. Now copy the short code example into the irb session.

require 'Qt4' a = Qt::Application.new ARGV w = Qt::PushButton.new "Hello Ruby" Qt::Object.connect( w, SIGNAL( :clicked ), a, SLOT( :quit ) ) w.show a.exec

Before you starting you start programming your Graphical User Interface (GUI), you have to <require the libraries, in this case Qt4, but korundum4 would also do the job, because the KDE libs automatically also requires the Qt libs for you.

In the second line we create a new Qt Object a of Qt::Application. Qt is the Ruby module (namespace) and Application the name of the class in the module. In C++, the native language of Qt, you would write QApplication. Remember this as you will need it, if you want to take a look in the Qt documentation.

Another object w of Qt::PushButton is created in the third line. "Hello Ruby" is the first (and only) argument of the Constructor. If you check the Qt documentation, you would find out, that this is the caption of the button. Ruby would also allow you to write it with brackets.

w = Qt::PushButton.new( "Hello Ruby" )

The small w means widget. All graphical elements in Qt are called widgets.

The fourth line is probably the most complicated one. The ruby class method connect of the object Object of the module Qt is used to bind the user action button-clicked with the action application-close. The signals and slots is a special concept of Qt. You can get a short overview and other ressources on Wikipedia.

The C++ equivalent you will find in the Qt documentation to :clicked would be "clicked()", a signal without an argument. In the case of no arguments you can always use a ruby symbol.

The fifth line let the created widget show. Don't forget this line. Maybe you want to think of a starting point of your application.

At last the application gets started by a.exec. Now the GUI takes over and manages the control flow. Any other command after this line will be applied after the GUI was closed.

Say Hello, Ruby

In the next example we want our GUI to do something interactively. Because it is more complex you may want to save it in a file "sayHello.rb".

If you are on a linux-based system, you can add on the top of the file a so called Shebang line. After giving the file execution rights with chmod +x sayHello.rb by using the shell, you can execute your program with a click on the icon in the file browser or in the command line with ./sayRuby.rb.

!/usr/bin/ruby
file: sayHello.rb

require 'Qt4'
class CustomApplication < Qt::Application

 slots :sayHello

 def sayHello
   msgBox = Qt::MessageBox.new
   msgBox.text = "Hello World"
   msgBox.icon = Qt::MessageBox::Information
   val = msgBox.exec()
   
   Qt::Application.instance.quit
 end

end

a = CustomApplication.new ARGV w = Qt::PushButton.new( "Say Hello, Ruby" ) Qt::Object.connect( w, SIGNAL( :clicked ), a, SLOT( :sayHello ) ) w.show a.exec

In the last example we connected the button with the existing slot :close. Now we want to create our own slot. We create a new class CustomApplication by inheriting from Qt::Application and add a slot :sayHello. It doesn't have any arguments. So we can use the shortcut instead of "sayHello()". After that we define a method with the same name and number of arguments. In the method a message box is prepared which get shown to the user with exec(). To define the properties of the message box, the binding specific syntax is used, which allows you to replace setText( "Hello World" ) with text = "Hello World". Remember this as you need it to find the class method in the C++ documentation of Qt.

With Qt::Application.instance.quit the program gets closed.

The last lines are nearly the same as in the last example. We have to replace Qt::Application with our own class CustomApplication and change the in the slot to :sayHello in the connection command.

Say Hello, Ruby - the short version

!/usr/bin/ruby
file: sayHello.rb

require 'Qt4'
a = Qt::Application.new ARGV
w = Qt::PushButton.new( "Say Hello, Ruby" )
w.connect( SIGNAL( :clicked ) ) do

 msgBox = Qt::MessageBox.new
 msgBox.text = "Hello World"
 msgBox.icon = Qt::MessageBox::Information
 val = msgBox.exec()
 
 Qt::Application.instance.quit

end w.show a.exec

The bindings offer you a special features, which allows you to define the actions for a given signal without having to create a slot. Just use the connect method of the Qt object which owns the signal you want to use. The connect expects you to give only one argument,the signal, followd by a code block (do ... end), which gets processed in the case the signal is triggered. This way of programming allows a very compact style. In this case you don't need to create a CustomApplication.

Say Hello, Ruby - an even shorter version

require 'Qt4'

a = Qt::Application.new ARGV w = Qt::PushButton.new( "Hello Ruby" ) do

 self.connect( SIGNAL :clicked ) do 
   msgBox = Qt::MessageBox.new
   msgBox.text = "Hello World"
   msgBox.icon = Qt::MessageBox::Information
   val = msgBox.exec()
   
   Qt::Application.instance.quit
 end

end w.show a.exec

If you create a new object, you can add a code block with some statements, that gets executed in the namespace of the new object. You can expand the usage on the msgBox, too.

require 'Qt4'

a = Qt::Application.new ARGV w = Qt::PushButton.new( "Hello Ruby" ) do

 self.connect( SIGNAL :clicked ) do 
   msgBox = Qt::MessageBox.new do
     self.text = "Hello World"
     self.icon = Qt::MessageBox::Information
   end
   val = msgBox.exec()    
   Qt::Application.instance.quit
 end

end w.show a.exec