Development/Tutorials/Plasma4/GettingStarted

Creating your first Plasmoid

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

Abstract

Where going to start creating a simple plasmoid in this tutorial, to keep things simple we will only create a static plasmoid, it will contain the following items.

• SVG Background
• Icon
• Some nice text

The Code

The .desktop file

Every Plasmoid needs a .desktop file to tell plasma how they should be started, and what name they carry.

plasma-applet-tutorial1.desktop [Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Name=Tutorial 1 Comment=Plasma Tutorial 1 Type=Service ServiceTypes=Plasma/Applet

X-KDE-Library=plasma_applet_tutorial1 X-KDE-PluginInfo-Author=Bas Grolleman [email protected] X-KDE-PluginInfo-Name=plasma_applet_tutorial1 X-KDE-PluginInfo-Version=0.1 X-KDE-PluginInfo-Website=http://plasma.kde.org/ X-KDE-PluginInfo-Category= 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 paste between your class and plasma, without it, nothing will start.

The header file

This is the example header file, I will add lot's of comment's in the code to explain everything.

plasma-tutorial1.h // Here we avoid loading the header multiple times, this is required

1. ifndef Tutorial1_HEADER
2. define Tutorial1_HEADER

// Ofcourse, we need the plasma headers

1. include <Plasma/Applet>

// Your Plasma Applet class PlasmaTutorial1 : public Plasma::Applet {

 Q_OBJECT
 public:
   // This is basic C++ , the create and destroy functions
   PlasmaTutorial1(QObject *parent, const QStringList &args);
   ~PlasmaTutorial1();

   // This is how plasma knows the size of your applet
   // if you have drawing issues (stuff staying behind for example)
   // than most times your drawing outside or at the border of this 
   // rectangle
   QRectF boundingRect() const;

   // This is the main drawing function and used to paint your
   // plasmoid on screen 
   void paintInterface(QPainter *painter, const QStyleOptionGraphicsItem *option, QWidget *widget =0);

};

// This is the part that links your .desktop file. K_EXPORT_PLASMA_APPLET(tutorial1, PlasmaTutorial1)

1. endif

Tip

When using the K_EXPORT_PLASMA_APPLET do not start it with plasma_applet_ this is already done by the macro and doing it yourself will make a name diffrence between your .desktop and your libary, resulting in no plasmoid being started

The actual work file

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

plasma-tutorial1.cpp // We include the header and the required libaries

1. include "plasma-tutorial1.h"
2. include <QPainter>
3. include <QFontMetrics>
4. include <KIcon>

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

       : Plasma::Applet(parent, args)

{ }

PlasmaTutorial1::~PlasmaTutorial1() { }

QRectF PlasmaTutorial1::boundingRect() const {

       return QRectF(0,0,256,256);

}

void PlasmaTutorial1::paintInterface(QPainter *p, const QStyleOptionGraphicsItem *option, QWidget *widget) {

       KIcon icon("document");
       p->save();
       p->setPen(Qt::black);
       p->drawPixmap(0, 0, icon.pixmap(boundingRect().width()));
       p->drawText(boundingRect(),Qt::AlignCenter,"Hello Plasmoid!");
       p->restore();

}

1. include "plasma-tutorial1.moc"