I'm new in QT...and i haven't time. I have a GUI with 3 labels that must be update from 3 different threads (permanents, that invoke 3 different methods) every 10 secs. What is the best way to make this? thanks in advance!
You should use Qt signaling mechanism.
class QWindow : QMainWindow
{
//this macro is important for QMake to let the meta programming mechanism know
//this class uses Qt signalling
Q_OBJECT
slots:
void updateLabel(QString withWhat)
...
};
And now You just need to connect this slot to some signal
class SomeThreadClass : QObject
{
Q_OBJECT
...
signals:
void labelUpdateRequest(QString withwhat);
};
in the constructor of the window
QWindow::QWindow(QWidget* parent) : QMainWindow(parent)
{
m_someThread = new SomeThreadClass();
//in old style Qt, now there's a mechanism for compile time check
//don't use pointers, you need to free them at some point and there might be many receivers
//that might use it
connect(m_someThread, SIGNAL(labelUpdateRequest(QString)), this, SLOT(updateLabel(QString));
...
}
now just at some point in the thread:
SomeThreadClass::someMethod()
{
//do something...
emit labelUpdateRequest(QString("Welcome to cartmanland!"));
//this will be received by all classes that call connect to this class.
}
Hope that helps :)
Related
Declaration part of Controller class:
class ProtocolPacket: public QQuickItem
{
private:
Q_OBJECT
...
QThread objWorkerThread;
public:
ProtocolPacket();
~ProtocolPacket();
...
The constructor of controller class:
ProtocolPacket::ProtocolPacket()
{
ReadWriteSerialPort *objReadWriteSerialPort = new ReadWriteSerialPort;
objReadWriteSerialPort->moveToThread(&objWorkerThread);
connect(&objWorkerThread, &QThread::finished,
objReadWriteSerialPort, &QObject::deleteLater);
/// Following signals of ProtocolPacket class are connected to the corresponding
/// slots of thread class ReadWriteSerialPort.
connect(this, &ProtocolPacket::cameraValueChanged,
objReadWriteSerialPort, &ReadWriteSerialPort::receiveAndSendUpdatedCameraValue);
...
...
objWorkerThread.start();
}
The constructor of worker thread class:
ReadWriteSerialPort::ReadWriteSerialPort()
{
...
serialPort.setPortName ("/dev/ttyUSB0");
serialPort.setBaudRate (QSerialPort::Baud19200);
if(serialPort.open (QIODevice::ReadWrite))
{
serialPort.setDataBits(QSerialPort::Data8);
serialPort.setParity(QSerialPort::NoParity);
serialPort.setStopBits(QSerialPort::OneStop);
}
objWriter = new SerialPortWriter(&serialPort);
objReader = new SerialPortReader(&serialPort);
timerSendVelocityPackets = new QTimer(this);
connect (timerSendVelocityPackets, SIGNAL (timeout()),
this, SLOT (sendVelocityPacket()));
timerSendHealthFeedbackPackets = new QTimer(this);
connect (timerSendHealthFeedbackPackets, SIGNAL (timeout()),
this, SLOT (formAndSendHealthFeedbackPackets()));
timerReceivePackets = new QTimer (this);
connect (timerReceivePackets, SIGNAL (timeout()),
this, SLOT (receiveAndUnpackPacket()));
timerReceivePackets->start (300);
}
I am receiving the error:
QObject::startTimer: Timers cannot be started from another thread
What am I doing wrong?
I wish to start the timers from the worker class: ReadWriteSerialPort
Every object constructed in the object that you move to another thread must have its parent set:
class ReadWriteSerialPort : public QObject {
QSerialPort serialPort { this }; // important
QTimer timerSendVelocityPackets { this }; // etc.
...
};
You also must ensure that there are no direct calls into the thread-unsafe methods of ReadWriteSerialPort from other threads.
Furthermore, unless you're polling for data, the timer-driven packet receive is incorrect. You should act on the readyRead signal issued by the serial port.
I also question the separate reader and writer: Usually these tasks both need to be aware of the expected state of the target device, so separating them might be unhelpful. It's hard to say without seeing more of the code.
I have something like this:
class Thing : public QObject {
...
public slots:
void doSomething ();
...
};
I then have an object that manages Things, like this:
class ManyThings : public QObject {
...
public:
void makeThingDoSomething (int thingIndex);
private:
QVector<Thing *> things_;
...
};
My question is this: The Things in ManyThing's collection are scattered among a few different threads. I'd like makeThingDoSomething(int) to call the things_[thingIndex]->doSomething() slot as if the slot was called from a signal connected with Qt::AutoConnection. Essentially this, but using Qt's queuing mechanism if the Thing is on a different thread than the caller:
void ManyThings::makeThingDoSomething (int thingIndex) {
// i want to do this AutoConnection style, not direct:
things_[thingIndex]->doSomething();
// doesn't *need* to block for completion
}
What's the simplest way to set this up? I could make a signal in ManyThings and connect it to each of the Thing's slots, but then emitting that signal would call the slot on every Thing, not just a specific one. Is there some way to easily set up connections so that I can connect the same signal to different object's slots depending on an index parameter passed to the signal, or something? Or some way to call the slot using Qt's signal/slot mechanism without actually having to create a signal?
Try using QMetaObject::invokeMethod:
void ManyThings::makeThingDoSomething(int thingIndex) {
QMetaObject::invokeMethod(things_[thingIndex], "doSomething",
Qt::AutoConnection);
}
Note that doSomething will likely have to remain a slot if you use this approach.
I'm playing with gtkD for a while, and I'm learning D2/Phobos in parallel. Yesterday I was looking up the std.concurrency module and tried to write a toy multithreaded fractal viewer, but the problem is that I can't see the way multithreading works with gtkD.
Now, I have this:
import std.concurrency;
class TestMainWindow : MainWindow
{
this() {
super("test");
...
spawn(&worker);
}
public void notify() {
m_progress.pulse();
}
private ProgressBar m_progress;
}
shared(TestMainWindow) window;
main(string[] args) {
Main.init(args);
window = new shared(TestMainWindow)();
Main.run();
}
void worker() {
for (int i = 0; i < 20; ++i) {
(cast(TestMainWindow) window).notify();
Thread.sleep(dur!"msecs"(200));
}
}
In the Andrei's book, in the chapter for concurrency, there's the message passing paradigm, which I want to
apply, but the problem is that the gtk main loop is hidden from me. I don't like the above code, because its
ugly to cast to non-shared and likely unsafe.
So is there some way to inherit a "thread-agnostic" class, making it thread-aware, and what is the
standard mechanism in gtkD to program multithreaded applications? I've seen the gthread.Thread module,
but its role seems to be only as an interface to the external C gtk+ threading capabilities.
Unfortunately I'm pretty sure the answer is no. GtkD was designed before shared existed and supports both D1 and D2. Furthermore, shared is so buggy it's not usable yet. Therefore, GtkD doesn't support shared and probably won't for a while.
Let me just give you an example.
class B : public QThread {
public:
void run() {
}
};
class A : public QThread {
public:
void run() {
b1.start(); b2.start();
}
protected:
B b1, b2;
};
I want A::b1 and A::b2 to run as completely independent threads, not sharing resources of parent thread (A). Is there any way to specify main thread as parent thread of b1 and b2?
I've also looked at QThreadPool and QRunnable, and i don't understand, how is it possible to manage all runnables (for example, stop one of them, and then run it again) of threadpool.
Subclassing QThread is the wrong way of creating threads in Qt. QObject provides the function moveToThread which simply allows you to change the thread affinity of an object and its children.
Changes the thread affinity for this object and its children. The
object cannot be moved if it has a parent. Event processing will
continue in the targetThread.
To move an object to the main thread, use QApplication::instance() to
retrieve a pointer to the current application, and then use
QApplication::thread() to retrieve the thread in which the application
lives.
So what you should do is to is to inherit from QObject instead of QThread and change your run function to move the B objects to other threads.
Sample Code (untested)
class B : public QObject {
Q_OBJECT
public:
void run() {
}
};
class A : public QObject {
Q_OBJECT
public:
void run() {
b1Thread = new QThread;
b2Thread = new QThread;
b1.moveToThread(b1Thread);
b2.moveToThread(b2Thread);
b1.run();
b2.run();
}
protected:
B b1, b2;
private:
QThread* b1Thread, b2Thread; // Delete them in the destructor.
};
You could construct the threads in main.cpp and pass them to the B class as arguments.
Notice the following concerning moveToThread
this function can only "push" an object from the current thread to
another thread, it cannot "pull" an object from any arbitrary thread
to the current thread.
The QFuture class has methods such as cancel(), progressValue(), etc. These can apparently be monitored via a QFutureWatcher. However, the documentation for QtConcurrent::run() reads:
Note that the QFuture returned by
QtConcurrent::run() does not support
canceling, pausing, or progress
reporting. The QFuture returned can
only be used to query for the
running/finished status and the return
value of the function.
I have looked in vain for what method actually can create a QFuture that can be cancelled and report progress for a single long-running operation. (It looks like maybe QtConcurrent::map() and similar functions can, but I just have a single, long-running method.)
(For those familiar with .Net, something like the BackgroundWorker class.)
What options are available?
Though it's been a while since this question was posted and answered I decided to add my way of solving this problem because it is rather different from what was discussed here and I think may be useful to someone else. First, motivation of my approach is that I usually don't like to invent own APIs when framework already has some mature analogs. So the problem is: we have a nice API for controlling background computations represented by the QFuture<>, but we have no object that supports some of the operations. Well, let's do it. Looking on what's going on inside QtConcurrent::run makes things much clearer: a functor is made, wrapped into QRunnable and run in the global ThreadPool.
So I created generic interface for my "controllable tasks":
class TaskControl
{
public:
TaskControl(QFutureInterfaceBase *f) : fu(f) { }
bool shouldRun() const { return !fu->isCanceled(); }
private:
QFutureInterfaceBase *fu;
};
template <class T>
class ControllableTask
{
public:
virtual ~ControllableTask() {}
virtual T run(TaskControl& control) = 0;
};
Then, following what is made in qtconcurrentrunbase.h I made q-runnable for running this kind of tasks (this code is mostly from qtconcurrentrunbase.h, but slightly modified):
template <typename T>
class RunControllableTask : public QFutureInterface<T> , public QRunnable
{
public:
RunControllableTask(ControllableTask<T>* tsk) : task(tsk) { }
virtial ~RunControllableTask() { delete task; }
QFuture<T> start()
{
this->setRunnable(this);
this->reportStarted();
QFuture<T> future = this->future();
QThreadPool::globalInstance()->start(this, /*m_priority*/ 0);
return future;
}
void run()
{
if (this->isCanceled()) {
this->reportFinished();
return;
}
TaskControl control(this);
result = this->task->run(control);
if (!this->isCanceled()) {
this->reportResult(result);
}
this->reportFinished();
}
T result;
ControllableTask<T> *task;
};
And finally the missing runner class that will return us controllable QFututre<>s:
class TaskExecutor {
public:
template <class T>
static QFuture<T> run(ControllableTask<T>* task) {
return (new RunControllableTask<T>(task))->start();
}
};
The user should sublass ControllableTask, implement background routine which checks sometimes method shouldRun() of TaskControl instance passed to run(TaskControl&) and then use it like:
QFututre<int> futureValue = TaskExecutor::run(new SomeControllableTask(inputForThatTask));
Then she may cancel it by calling futureValue.cancel(), bearing in mind that cancellation is graceful and not immediate.
I tackled this precise problem a while ago, and made something called "Thinker-Qt"...it provides something called a QPresent and a QPresentWatcher:
http://hostilefork.com/thinker-qt/
It's still fairly alpha and I've been meaning to go back and tinker with it (and will need to do so soon). There's a slide deck and such on my site. I also documented how one would change Mandelbrot to use it.
It's open source and LGPL if you'd like to take a look and/or contribute. :)
Yan's statement is inaccurate. Using moveToThread is one way of achieving the proper behavior, but it not the only method.
The alternative is to override the run method and create your objects that are to be owned by the thread there. Next you call exec(). The QThread can have signals, but make sure the connections are all Queued. Also all calls into the Thread object should be through slots that are also connected over a Queued connection. Alternatively function calls (which will run in the callers thread of execution) can trigger signals to objects that are owned by the thread (created in the run method), again the connections need to be Queued.
One thing to note here, is that the constructor and destructor are running in the main thread of execution. Construction and cleanup need to be performed in run. Here is an example of what your run method should look like:
void MythreadDerrivedClass::run()
{
constructObjectsOnThread();
exec();
destructObjectsOnThread();
m_waitForStopped.wakeAll();
}
Here the constructObjectsOnThread will contain the code one would feel belongs in the constructor. The objects will be deallocated in destructObjectsOnThread. The actual class constructor will call the exit() method, causing the exec() to exit. Typically you will use a wait condition to sit in the destructor till the run has returned.
MythreadDerivedClass::~MythreadDerivedClass()
{
QMutexLocker locker(&m_stopMutex);
exit();
m_waitForStopped.wait(locker.mutex(), 1000);
}
So again, the constructor and destructor are running in the parent thread. The objects owned by the thread must be created in the run() method and destroyed before exiting run. The class destructor should only tell the thread to exit and use a QWaitCondition to wait for the thread to actually finish execution. Note when done this way the QThread derived class does have the Q_OBJECT macro in the header, and does contain signals and slots.
Another option, if you are open to leveraging a KDE library, is KDE's Thread Weaver. It's a more complete task based multitasking implementation similar QtConcurrentRun in that it leverages a thread pool. It should be familiar for anyone from a Qt background.
That said, if you are open to a c++11 method of doing the same thing, I would look at std::async. For one thing, you will no longer have any dependance on Qt, but the api also makes more clear what is going on. With MythreadDerivedClass class inheriting from QThread, the reader gets the impression that MythreadDerivedClass is a thread (since it has an inheritance relationship), and that all its functions run on a thread. However, only the run() method actually runs on a thread. std::async is easier to use correctly, and has fewer gotcha's. All our code is eventually maintained by someone else, and these sorta things matter in the long run.
C++11 /w QT Example:
class MyThreadManager {
Q_OBJECT
public:
void sndProgress(int percent)
void startThread();
void stopThread();
void cancel() { m_cancelled = true; }
private:
void workToDo();
std::atomic<bool> m_cancelled;
future<void> m_threadFuture;
};
MyThreadedManger::startThread() {
m_cancelled = false;
std::async(std::launch::async, std::bind(&MyThreadedManger::workToDo, this));
}
MyThreadedManger::stopThread() {
m_cancelled = true;
m_threadfuture.wait_for(std::chrono::seconds(3))); // Wait for 3s
}
MyThreadedManger::workToDo() {
while(!m_cancelled) {
... // doWork
QMetaInvoke::invokeMethod(this, SIGNAL(sndProgress(int)),
Qt::QueuedConnection, percentDone); // send progress
}
}
Basically, what I've got here isn't that different from how your code would look like with QThread, however, it is more clear that only workToDo() is running on the thread and that MyThreadManager is only managing the thread and not the thread itself. I'm also using MetaInvoke to send a queued signal for sending our progress updates with takes care of the progress reporting requirement. Using MetaInvoke is more explicit and always does the right thing (doesn't matter how you connect signals from your thread managers to other class's slots). You can see that the loop in my thread checks an atomic variable to see when the process is cancelled, so that handles the cancellation requirement.
Improve #Hatter answer to support Functor.
#include <QFutureInterfaceBase>
#include <QtConcurrent>
class CancellationToken
{
public:
CancellationToken(QFutureInterfaceBase* f = NULL) : m_f(f){ }
bool isCancellationRequested() const { return m_f != NULL && m_f->isCanceled(); }
private:
QFutureInterfaceBase* m_f;
};
/*== functor task ==*/
template <typename T, typename Functor>
class RunCancelableFunctorTask : public QtConcurrent::RunFunctionTask<T>
{
public:
RunCancelableFunctorTask(Functor func) : m_func(func) { }
void runFunctor() override
{
CancellationToken token(this);
this->result = m_func(token);
}
private:
Functor m_func;
};
template <typename Functor>
class RunCancelableFunctorTask<void, Functor> : public QtConcurrent::RunFunctionTask<void>
{
public:
RunCancelableFunctorTask(Functor func) : m_func(func) { }
void runFunctor() override
{
CancellationToken token(this);
m_func(token);
}
private:
Functor m_func;
};
template <class T>
class HasResultType
{
typedef char Yes;
typedef void *No;
template<typename U> static Yes test(int, const typename U::result_type * = 0);
template<typename U> static No test(double);
public:
enum { Value = (sizeof(test<T>(0)) == sizeof(Yes)) };
};
class CancelableTaskExecutor
{
public:
//function<T or void (const CancellationToken& token)>
template <typename Functor>
static auto run(Functor functor)
-> typename std::enable_if<!HasResultType<Functor>::Value,
QFuture<decltype(functor(std::declval<const CancellationToken&>()))>>::type
{
typedef decltype(functor(std::declval<const CancellationToken&>())) result_type;
return (new RunCancelableFunctorTask<result_type, Functor>(functor))->start();
}
};
User example:
#include <QDateTime>
#include <QDebug>
#include <QTimer>
#include <QFuture>
void testDemoTask()
{
QFuture<void> future = CancelableTaskExecutor::run([](const CancellationToken& token){
//long time task..
while(!token.isCancellationRequested())
{
qDebug() << QDateTime::currentDateTime();
QThread::msleep(100);
}
qDebug() << "cancel demo task!";
});
QTimer::singleShot(500, [=]() mutable { future.cancel(); });
}
For a long running single task, QThread is probably your best bet. It doesn't have build-in progress reporting or canceling features so you will have to roll your own. But for simple progress update it's not that hard. To cancel the task, check for a flag that can be set from calling thread in your task's loop.
One thing to note is if you override QThread::run() and put your task there, you can't emit signal from there since the QThread object is not created within the thread it runs in and you can't pull the QObject from the running thread. There is a good writeup on this issue.