PyQt4 Lab 1

© D. Thiebaut 2009.

This tutorial is a quick introduction to PyQt, a binding of Python with the Qt4 GUI library. Qt was originally made by Trolltech, now bought by Nokia, and is a powerful platform for developing GUI applications in C++ or Java for Windows, MacOS, and Linux, as well as embedded platforms.

This tutorial shows the basic steps for installing PyQt on a Windows XP machine (sorry, still not using and resisting using Vista), and creating a simple app.

Installing PyQt

• First install SIP which allows binding of C++ and python program. SIP can be found at http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/sip/download. The last step of the installation gave me an error message, but this was for something relatively trivial which shouldn't influence the operation of the package.

• Then download and install PyQt4, also from Riverbank: http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pyqt/download . As of today (2/1/09), this installs Python 2.6 on your system. It may be different for you depending on when you install this package.

• Note where the installation will store the different packages, and add these directories to your environment Path using Control Panel/System/Advanced/Environment Variables.

• A test for verifying that your installation works

• • Go Start/All Programs/Python 2.6/IDLE (again, it may be a different version for you)
  • If the python shell window is not open, open it up (Run/Python Shell)
  • Open a Python Shell window, and type

   import PyQt4

If you do not get an error message, then PyQt4 is installed correctly.

Creating the GUI (form)

• Locate the Qt Designer that should have been installed as part of the previous step, and launch it.

• In the New Form menu that appears, select a MainWindow

• Drag a TextEdit widget to the window, along with two push buttons. Right click on these 3 widgets to change their names to textEdit, closeButton, and clearButton. Also change the caption on the two buttons to Close, and Clear, also using right click to access the properties of the widgets.

• Use the layout button to make sure the widgets align properly.

• Create a new folder on your disk, and save the form there as form1.ui. The ui extenstion stands for user interface and is a format used by Qt. A copy of this form is available here

The Python Code

• Convert form1.ui into a python representation. Open a DOS window (console) and type:

 pyuic4 form1.ui > editor.py

The contents of editor.py is available here.