PyQt/DevelopmentWithEric3

Add your tips on eric3 here!

This is a little tutorial that is a bit outdated (the sample source has to be changed in some points, but I don't remember them, sorry): http://www.pycs.net/lateral/stories/16.html

OK, here is the 5-minute introduction. I've just installed eric3 and pyQt on debian; the command

  apt-get install eric eric-api-files pyqt-tools

will do the trick.

On Ubuntu, "apt-get install eric" is sufficient. Just to be sure, you can try

  apt-get install eric python-kde3 qt3-assistant qt3-designer qt3-linguist qt3-doc pyqt-tools python-xml

which will install eric and all the optional packages that it requires.

Then, a very important thing to do is to set up QTDIR correctly in Settings->Preferences->Qt or else a lot of problems will crop out later. I've mine set to /usr/share/qt3

Restart eric and everything (hopefully) will work as explained below...

Create_Project

First, select Project->New to create a new project. Name it 'Hello', ensure that the UI Type is QT, and press OK.

Create_Dialog

Run Qt Designer (Extras->Tools->Designer) and create a new form using File->New... and selecting Dialog from the wizard.

Set the name of the dialog form hello_form and change the caption to 'hello' (or whatever). Add a PushButton to the form and the change the text to 'Close' (or, again, whatever).

Hit F3 or the Connect Signals/Slots button. Create a connection from the PushButton pressed signal to the hello_form 'close()' slot.

Save the form as hello_form.ui and exit Qt designer.

Add Dialog To Project

The project Browser is the tabbed or notebook widget in on the upper left of the Eric3 IDE. It has a tab with a snake, a (drawing) compass, a fish, a piece of paper saying IDL, and a blank piece of paper; these represent the project Sources, Forms, Translations, Interfaces, and Others.

Go to the Forms tab in the Project Browser. Right-click on the tab to get the Forms context menu ; select 'New Form', then 'Dialog' . When the file dialog comes up, select 'hello_form.ui' and press OK.

The 'hello_form.ui' file will appear in the Forms tab. Right-click on it and select 'Compile Form' . This will create 'hello_form.py' and add it to the Sources tab in the Project Browser.

Generate Subclass For Form

Right-click on 'hello_form.ui' in the Forms tab of the Project Browser and choose 'Generate Subclass' . When prompted for a name, enter 'hello_form_impl'.

This will open an untitled python script window with the subclass implementation in it. Save the script as 'hello_form_impl.py' .

Go to the Sources tab of the Project Browser and right-click on the background. Choose 'Add source file...' and select 'hello_form_impl.py' in the file dialog, then press OK.

Create A Main Script

Open a new python script. Enter the following code:

   1 #!/usr/bin/env python
   2 
   3 import sys
   4 from qt import *
   5 from hello_form_impl import hello_form_Impl
   6 
   7 # create Qt application
   8 app = QApplication(sys.argv)
   9 
  10 # create and show Qt form
  11 form = hello_form_Impl()
  12 form.show()
  13 
  14 # enter Qt event-handling loop
  15 app.exec_loop()

Save the script as 'hello_main.py'

Go to Project->Properties

Set the 'Main script' property to 'hello_main.py' and press OK; this will add 'hello_main.py' to the Sources tab of the Project Browser.

Wrapping It Up

Use Debug->Run Project to run the scripts and show the dialog.