Creating an Application Specific Console in QT Jambi

Code Perspective Admin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 04:22:25 +0000

I am currently working on a project that required a console with a very specific purpose. It needed to communicate with a custom back-end protocol for use in a client/server environment. This sort of specific tutorial is not surprisingly unavailable online. The first step when setting up an application specific console is actually setting up the back-end. This is something that will be potentially done as a future tutorial. Anyways back to building the console window. The components included in the console window will be one QTextEdit, and one QLineEdit. This can be constructed in any way you like. The QTextEdit can be on the bottom and the QLineEdit on top or the other way around, that’s up to you.

Next, we will need to be adding a custom action listener to the QLineEdit so that when the enter key is pressed inside the QLineEdit the command will be sent to the server and then displayed in the QTextEdit window. As a future feature implementation, syntax highlighting could be implemented for an easier display inside the QTextEdit window. The custom action listener to add to the QLineEdit bar looks like this…

1	QLineEdit.returnPressed.connect(this, "NameOfActionListenerMethod()");

This will ensure that everytime the enter button is pressed, the string that the user entered will be able to be transfered to the server, or wherever else in the program you would like it to go. Now for the action listener method. The method should be declared as public with a return type of void.

public void terminalWindowEnterPressed()
    {
        terminalWindow.append(enterArea.text());
        enterArea.setText("Protocol Name > ");
    }

Then once you have the action listener built to just send the data to the window, you can do the same with sending it across a network.

All Together the code looks like this. All you have to do is copy/paste the code into your program and use it at will.

/**
     *
     */
    public void buildTerminal()
    {
        terminalFrame = new QFrame();
        terminalFrame.setWindowTitle("Window Title");
 
        terminalWindow = new QTextEdit();
        terminalWindow.setReadOnly(true);
 
        enterArea = new QLineEdit();
        enterArea.setText("Protocol Name > ");
        enterLabel = new QLabel("Enter Command");
 
        terminalFrame.setMinimumSize(600, 400);
 
        enterArea.returnPressed.connect(this, "terminalWindowEnterPressed()");
 
        QGridLayout layout = new QGridLayout();
        layout.addWidget(terminalWindow,0,0,10,10);
        layout.addWidget(enterArea,11,1,1,9);
        layout.addWidget(enterLabel, 11,0,1,1);
 
        terminalFrame.setLayout(layout);
        terminalFrame.show();
    }
 
    /**
     *
     */
    public void terminalWindowEnterPressed()
    {
        terminalWindow.append(enterArea.text());
        enterArea.setText("Protocol Name > ");
    }

Cheers

Creating a Basic Window in Qt

Code Perspective Admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 03:09:46 +0000

This is a basic piece of code to get you started with the QT Jambi API. Ensure that you have the QT libraries installed before you try and run this code. IF you don’t have this then it won’t run properly and will throw an error. This displays a basic window. Nothing added to it just a basic QT Jambi Window.

import com.trolltech.qt.gui.*;
 
public class basicWindow
{
 private final int WINDOW_WIDTH = 500;
 private final int WINDOW_HEIGHT = 400;
 private QFrame frame;
 
 public basicWindow()
 {
  //create the frame
  frame = new QFrame();
 
  //create the size of the window
  frame.resize(WINDOW_WIDTH, WINDOW_HEIGHT);
 
  //create the layout for the window
  QGridLayout gridLayout = new QGridLayout();
 
  //add the layout to the main frame
  frame.setLayout(gridLayout);
  frame.show(); 
 }
 
 public static void main(String[] args)
 {
  //Used to initialize the window
  QApplication.initialize(args);
 
  //creates a new instance of the basicWindow
  new basicWindow();
 
  //runs the window as an application
  QApplication.exec();
 }
}

Cheers

Code Perspective » Java

Creating an Application Specific Console in QT Jambi

Creating a Basic Window in Qt