PyQt

1. I seek a way to design GUI interfaces for Python.
2. I want one that runs cross-platform (Windows and Linux)
3. I want to create apps that can run on my OpenMoko FreeRunner.

This page is about PyQt, which is a set of bindings to allow using Python with TrollTech QT

Articles and references

At DevShed: PyQT Getting Started

Some tutorials:

Creating the UI programmatically: http://zetcode.com/tutorials/pyqt4/

PyQt 3 (outdated): http://www.cs.usfca.edu/~afedosov/qttut/

The official documentation: http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/static/Docs/PyQt4/pyqt4ref.html

Book review: Summerfield, Mark: Rapid GUI Programming with Python and Qt, 2008
I got it last week so the jury is still out but it seems useful. It's a textbook. The first 1/3 is a Python tutorial (I was hoping for more Qt and less Python but it's a textbook so it makes sense in a classroom context.)

Development tools

I use ActiveState Komodo as my Python IDE. I recommend it highly even though it costs money. There is a CIX package for Komodo available from ActiveState.

Windows A complete Windows binary package is available from http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/pyqt It includes everything you need, including the runtime, the designer, the bindings. Quite nice.

Development cycle

1 Design a user interface in QT4 Designer. Save as a .ui file (XML).

2 Generate Python code from the UI file using pyuic.

pyuic4.bat myForm.ui myForm.py

3 Create a python wrapper with the event loop in it. For example

import sys
from PyQt4 import QtGui
from myForm import Ui_MainWindow
        
app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
window = QtGui.QMainWindow()
ui = Ui_MainWindow()
ui.setupUi(window)
window.show()

sys.exit(app.exec_())

This suffices if you don't need to call any Python code from your user interface. (I suppose that could happen somehow?) This example shows how to call code from buttons.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
from PyQt4 import QtCore, QtGui
from DispatchCenter import Ui_MainWindow

class MainWindow(QtGui.QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self):
        QtGui.QDialog.__init__(self)

        # Set up the user interface from Designer.
        self.ui = Ui_MainWindow()
        self.ui.setupUi(self)

        #self.tableView

        # Connect up the buttons.
        self.connect(self.ui.btnSend, QtCore.SIGNAL("clicked()"),
                     self, QtCore.SLOT("sendDispatch()"))
        self.connect(self.ui.btnCustom, QtCore.SIGNAL("clicked()"),
                     self, QtCore.SLOT("openCustomForm()"))

    def sendDispatch():
        # do something here
        pass
    
    def openCustomForm():
        # do something here
        pass
    
app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
window = MainWindow()
ui = Ui_MainWindow()
ui.setupUi(window)

window.show()
sys.exit(app.exec_())