Development/Tutorials/Plasma4/GettingStarted

Development/Tutorials

Creating your first Plasmoid

Tutorial Series	Plasma Tutorial
Previous	C++, Qt, KDE4 development environment
What's Next
Further Reading	CMake

Abstract

This tutorial needs KDE 4.1 (trunk) to build. We are going to create a simple plasmoid in this tutorial. To keep things simple, we will only create a static plasmoid which will contain the following items:

An SVG Image
Icon
Some nice text

The Code

The .desktop file

Every Plasmoid needs a .desktop file to tell plasma how it should be started and what name it carries.

plasma-applet-tutorial1.desktop [Desktop Entry] Name=Tutorial 1 Comment=Plasma Tutorial 1 Type=Service

X-KDE-ServiceTypes=Plasma/Applet X-KDE-Library=plasma_applet_tutorial1 X-KDE-PluginInfo-Author=Bas Grolleman [email protected] X-KDE-PluginInfo-Name=tutorial1 X-KDE-PluginInfo-Version=0.1 X-KDE-PluginInfo-Website=http://plasma.kde.org/ X-KDE-PluginInfo-Category=Examples X-KDE-PluginInfo-Depends= X-KDE-PluginInfo-License=GPL X-KDE-PluginInfo-EnabledByDefault=true

The most important bits are the X-KDE-Library and X-KDE-PluginInfo-Name, they are the "glue" between your class and plasma, without it, nothing will start. For X-KDE-PluginInfo-Category, refer to the PIG.

The header file

This is the example header file. Comments have been added in the code for clarity.

plasma-tutorial1.h // Here we avoid loading the header multiple times

ifndef Tutorial1_HEADER
define Tutorial1_HEADER

// We need the Plasma Applet headers

include <KIcon>

include <Plasma/Applet>
include <Plasma/Svg>

class QSizeF;
// Define our plasma Applet
class PlasmaTutorial1 : public Plasma::Applet
{

   Q_OBJECT
   public:
       // Basic Create/Destroy
       PlasmaTutorial1(QObject *parent, const QVariantList &args);
       ~PlasmaTutorial1();

       // The paintInterface procedure paints the applet to screen
       void paintInterface(QPainter *painter,
               const QStyleOptionGraphicsItem *option,
               const QRect& contentsRect);

	void init();

   private:
       Plasma::Svg m_svg;
       KIcon m_icon;

};
// This is the command that links your applet to the .desktop file
K_EXPORT_PLASMA_APPLET(tutorial1, PlasmaTutorial1)

endif

QRectF boundingRect()

The boundingRect() function tells plasma the actual size of the plasmoid. This is important because we need to know how much space is taken on the screen.

Tip

If you have issues with your plasmoid leaving pixels behind when dragging, this is usually a result of an incorrect boundingRect()

void paintInterface(QRectF contentsRect)

This can be considered the main function since it paints the plasmoid on to the screen. Here, you define how you want your plasmoid to look. You should only paint in the boundaries defined by contentsRect and avoid using geometry(). When a plasmoid does not have a standard background, e.g. when it's disabled with a setBackgroundHints() call or it's in the panel, geometry() and boundingRect() behave the same; however, when the standard background is enabled (the usual case), the appplet will have a margin where it should not be painted

K_EXPORT_PLASMA_APPLET ( <name>, <class> )

This is a small but very important part that links your classname to the applet name in the .desktop file. If your applet doesn't seem to get loaded, there may be a difference between this declaration and your .desktop file

Tip

The K_EXPORT_PLASMA_APPLET adds "plasma_applet_", please pay attention to this when setting up your .desktop file to avoid a name difference

The actual work file

Here is the body of the function, again with a lot of comments in between.

plasma-tutorial1.cpp

include "plasma-tutorial1.h"
include <QPainter>
include <QFontMetrics>
include <QSizeF>

include <plasma/svg.h>
include <plasma/theme.h>

PlasmaTutorial1::PlasmaTutorial1(QObject *parent, const QVariantList &args)

   : Plasma::Applet(parent, args),
   m_svg(this),
   m_icon("document")

   m_svg.setImagePath("widgets/background");
   // this will get us the standard applet background, for free!
   setBackgroundHints(DefaultBackground);
   resize(200, 200);

}


PlasmaTutorial1::~PlasmaTutorial1()
{

   if (hasFailedToLaunch()) {
       // Do some cleanup here
   } else {
       // Save settings
   }

}
void PlasmaTutorial1::init()
{

   // A small demonstration of the setFailedToLaunch function
   if (m_icon.isNull()) {
       setFailedToLaunch(true, "No world to say hello");
   }

} 

 
void PlasmaTutorial1::paintInterface(QPainter *p,

       const QStyleOptionGraphicsItem *option, const QRect &contentsRect)

   p->setRenderHint(QPainter::SmoothPixmapTransform);
   p->setRenderHint(QPainter::Antialiasing);

   // Now we draw the applet, starting with our svg
   m_svg.resize((int)contentsRect.width(), (int)contentsRect.height());
   m_svg.paint(p, (int)contentsRect.left(), (int)contentsRect.top());

   // We place the icon and text
   p->drawPixmap(7, 0, m_icon.pixmap((int)contentsRect.width(),(int)contentsRect.width()-14));
   p->save();
   p->setPen(Qt::white);
   p->drawText(contentsRect,
               Qt::AlignBottom | Qt::AlignHCenter,
               "Hello Plasmoid!");
   p->restore();

include "plasma-tutorial1.moc"

Plasma/Svg

As you can see in the example code we are using the Plasma::Svg object, there are some important things to note here.

First we're using a relative path widgets/background which causes Plasma::Svg to use Plasma::Theme to locate the SVG data. While Plasma::Svg does support loading arbitrary files when passed an absolute path, use relative paths from the theme as often as possible as it makes Plasma skinable and the individual plasmoids look like a combined whole instead of a group of separate unrelated applications. You can see a list of available image components on the Plasma Theme page.

In either mode, Plasma::Svg can be used to draw a subset of the SVG file by passing it an element id that appears in the SVG document. As a good example, if you open the clock.svg file that ships with the default theme, you will see that it has a background, 3 handles (hour, minute and seconds) and a foreground (the glass). Due to the ability to put all the elements in one file the SVG file shows a clock. This is much nicer for artists compared to editing 5 separate files that they have to imagine on top of each other, and much nicer for performance as only one SVG renderer and one file read from disk is necessary.

setBackgroundHints(DefaultBackground)

Since drawing a background is a common function there is fast and easier way of doing it. By adding setBackgroundHints(DefaultBackground) to the code, the default Plasma background gets drawn behind your plasmoid. This not only saves you time and code, but creates a more consistent presentation for the user.

The init() method

In the constructor you only tell plasma about the background and configuration file if any. You also set the start size in the constructor. After that, plasma will take care of any resizing and you never have to worry about size. In the init() method you initialize everything that needs to be initialize such as reading config data for example.

hasFailedToLaunch()

If for some reason, the applet fails to get up on its feet (the library couldn't be loaded, necessary hardware support wasn't found, etc..) this method returns true. Using this function gives your application a chance to cleanup before quiting.

setFailedToLaunch(bool, QString)

When your application is unable to start, this function allows you to inform Plasma and give an optional reason why. Plasma will then draw a standardized error interface to inform the user of the situation and your applet will not be called upon to do any drawing on its own from that point forward. If your plasmoid becomes more complex and depends on multiple factors this is the nicest way to cleanup.

dataUpdated

If you would connect to any of plasma's data-engines you would have to implement a function called dataUpdated in your plasmoid. The latter is called if the data-engine sends you data, i.e. your plasmoid should recalculate its contents.

Determine the applet size and geometry: geometry() and contentsRect()

If you need to know, in your applet code, what the applet size and geometry is, call contentsRect() and contentsRect().size(). Avoid calling geometry() and size() because they don't take into account the margin's size set by the applets default background. Also avoid using absolute numbers to position items in the applet like QPoint(0, 0) to indicate the top-left point of your applet, instead use contentsRect().topLeft().

Building it all, the CMakeLists.txt

Finally, to put everything together you need to build everything. To tell cmake what needs to go where there is the CMakeLists.txt file.

For more details on CMake please read Development/Tutorials/CMake

Project Needs a name ofcourse

project(plasma-tutorial1)

Find the required Libaries

find_package(KDE4 REQUIRED)
include(KDE4Defaults)
find_package(Plasma REQUIRED)
add_definitions (${QT_DEFINITIONS} ${KDE4_DEFINITIONS})
include_directories(

  ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}
  ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}
  ${KDE4_INCLUDES}
  )

We add our source code here

set(tutorial1_SRCS plasma-tutorial1.cpp)

Now make sure all files get to the right place

kde4_add_plugin(plasma_applet_tutorial1 ${tutorial1_SRCS})
target_link_libraries(plasma_applet_tutorial1

                     ${PLASMA_LIBS} ${KDE4_KDEUI_LIBS})

install(TARGETS plasma_applet_tutorial1

       DESTINATION ${PLUGIN_INSTALL_DIR})

install(FILES plasma-applet-tutorial1.desktop

       DESTINATION ${SERVICES_INSTALL_DIR})

Testing the Applet

If your current Development Environment differs from the Test Installation, you have to run cmake with -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/lib/kde4/ (replace with your $KDEDIR). Then run make. If succesfull the applet can be installed by running sudo make install or

cp ./lib/plasma_applet_tutorial1.so $KDEDIR/lib
cp ./plasma-applet-tutorial1.desktop $KDEDIR/share/kde4/services/

and run kbuildsycoca4 (so that KDE apps will know about the new desktop files). In order to test your Applet you can use the plasmoidviewer program: plasmoidviewer applet_name

Where applet_name is the value specified into .desktop for the X-KDE-PluginInfo-Name key.

Otherwise you can restart plasma, so the Applet will be displayed in the Applet Browser: kbuildsycoca4 kquitapp plasma plasma

If that doesn't work you will have to restart your KDE session by logging out and back in.