Is it possible to access custom properties from QT Designer after converting to python?

Question

Hi,

I am new to PyQt and Qt Designer and I'm trying to create an easy method for relating qWidgets with the tables and columns in an SQLite database. My idea was to tag each qWidget in designer with two custom properties, one with the table name and one with the column name. Later, I would use the info provided by designer to build my own class which creates a relationship between the qwidets and SQLite database.

Adding the custom properties in Designer seems to work fine however, the code for these custom properties do not get generated when converting the xml of designer into python (using UIC). Has anyone done this successfully? Perhaps there is a better way to do this?

Thanks,

Eric

Answer 1

Check out this article Eric. Particularly look at the section titled "Producing a Plugin." River Bank Computing has another great PyQt reference.

EDIT: I've been doing some more reading and I can't find a way to have this done automatically for you. If you are ok with with adding dynamic properties at run-time instead of design time you could accomplish the same end result. Here is an explanation of the setProperty() method in QObject, from which QWidget inherits.

If that doesn't work for you then it seems you might be better off going with a less generic approach. Instead of using a generic QWidget, you might be able to use a custom class derived from QSqlTableModel to keep track of your connection info. Another way would be to just use a QTableView and do the queries yourself to populate the data. Here and here are articles on databases in Qt. You might some inspiration for a new design from one of them.

Answer 2

I have not had great luck with using the Designer tool -- usually I end up doing a few rough layout, using pyuic and then editing and adding other stuff by hand.

It sounds like you could easily accomplish your task by creating your own custom class that inherits from QWidget and has the additional properties that you described. With my experiences trying to use custom widgets in the designer, I think the 'easier' way is to just write the class yourself and then set the layout by hand.

I know this doesn't exactly answer your question, but maybe you will try some of my suggestions.