Event Processing

Events are generated by the window system or by Qt itself in response to various occurrences.

Most events are generated in response to user actions, but some, such as timer events, are generated independently by the system.

 

Events should not be confused with signals. As a rule, signals are useful when using a widget, whereas events are useful when implementing a widget. For example, when we are using QPushButton, we are more interested in its clicked() signal than in the low-level mouse or key events that caused the signal to be emitted. But if we are implementing a class such as QPushButton, we need to write code to handle mouse and key events and emit the clicked() signal when necessary.

 

Reimplementing Event Handlers

In Qt, an event is an instance of a QEvent subclass.

Many event types require more information than can be stored in a plain QEvent object; for example, mouse press events need to store which mouse button triggered the event as well as where the mouse pointer was positioned when the event occurred. This additional information is stored in dedicated QEvent subclasses, such as QMouseEvent.

 

 

For example, if we were implementing a CodeEditor widget, its stripped-down keyPressEvent() that distinguishes between Home and Ctrl+Home would look like this:

void CodeEditor::keyPressEvent(QKeyEvent *event)
{
    switch (event->key()) {
    case Qt::Key_Home:
        if (event->modifiers() & Qt::ControlModifier) {
            goToBeginningOfDocument();
        } else {
            goToBeginningOfLine();
        }
        break;
    case Qt::Key_End:
        ...
    default:
        QWidget::keyPressEvent(event);
    }
}

 

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The Tab and Backtab (Shift+Tab) keys are special cases. QWidget::event() handles them before it calls keyPressEvent()

bool CodeEditor::event(QEvent *event)
{
    if (event->type() == QEvent::KeyPress) {
        QKeyEvent *keyEvent = static_cast<QKeyEvent *>(event);
        if (keyEvent->key() == Qt::Key_Tab) {
            insertAtCurrentPosition('/t');
            return true;
        }
    }
    return QWidget::event(event);
}

 

 

Timer events are low-level, and if we need multiple timers, it can become cumbersome to keep track of all the timer IDs. In such situations, it is usually easier to create a QTimer object for each timer. QTimer emits the timeout() signal at each time interval. QTimer also provides a convenient interface for single-shot timers