Rapid GUI Programming with Python and Qt

A sample chapter is available free from InformIT—click "Sample Content" and then "Download the chapter" (almost at the bottom of the page).

This book teaches programmers how to write programs using PyQt 4, the Python bindings for the Qt 4 application development framework. PyQt 4 is probably the fastest and easiest route into GUI programming and works on Windows, Mac OS X, and most operating systems that use the X Window System, such as Linux and many Unices. Note that the book is also useful for PySide programmers. (Be aware that from PyQt4.6, PyQt now has two slightly different APIs—but this only affects Python 3 out of the box and doesn't affect Python 2 users unless they want it to.)

The book will be useful to people who program professionally as part of their job, whether as full-time software developers, or those from other disciplines, including scientists and engineers, who need to do some programming in support of their work. It is also suitable for students—the only prerequisite is basic knowledge of an object oriented programming language, for example, Java or C++, or of course Python itself.

The book is ~550 pages (648 including the appendices and index), has a foreword by Phil Thompson creator of PyQt, and is published by Prentice Hall. It can also be bought from other online and local book stores.

Only the printed editions are definitive—although available in electronic formats, "ebooks" usually restrict your rights, and they are often retypeset which can introduce errors. A legal PDF version is available from InformIT. Translations are arranged by the publisher and their quality can vary considerably.

Downloads

In view of the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act and an abundance of caution, we have withdrawn all our free software, including our book examples.

Table of Contents—the chapters also have exercises and summaries

• Part I: Python Programming
  • Chapter 1. Data Types and Data Structures
  • Chapter 2. Control Structures
  • Chapter 3. Classes and Modules
• Part II: Basic GUI Programming
  • Chapter 4. Introduction to GUI Programming
  • Chapter 5. Dialogs
  • Chapter 6. Main Windows
  • Chapter 7. Using Qt Designer
  • Chapter 8. Custom File Formats
• Part III: Intermediate GUI Programming
  • Chapter 9. Layouts and Multiple Documents
  • Chapter 10. Events, the Clipboard, and Drag & Drop
  • Chapter 11. Custom Widgets
  • Chapter 12. Graphics (this chapter is devoted to the graphics view architecture introduced with Qt 4.2)
  • Chapter 13. Rich Text
  • Chapter 14. Model/View Programming
  • Chapter 15. Databases
• Part IV: Advanced GUI Programming
  • Chapter 16. Advanced Model/View Programming
  • Chapter 17. Internationalization
  • Chapter 18. Networking
  • Chapter 19. Multithreading
• Appendix A: Installing Python, PyQt, and the Qt Libraries on Windows, Mac OS X, and X11-based Unices including Linux
• Appendix B: Selected PyQt Widgets
• Appendix C: Selected PyQt Class Hierarchies
• Index

Part I is designed to quickly teach Python to non-Python programmers so that they can use the rest of the book. This part is also useful to Python programmers because it covers some of the non-GUI Qt classes, and some of the Python techniques that are often used in GUI programming, such as partial function application.

Most of the text is in Parts II, III, and IV. The chapters in these parts cover similar ground to my C++/Qt books, but have been written entirely from scratch with different examples and written from a totally PyQt 4 perspective. Also, some topics are included that are not covered by my other books, for example, the rich text engine, and some more advanced model/view programming techniques.

Reviews

• Review by Tony Cappellini—Rating: 9/10
• Review on TechBookReport—Verdict: Highly Recommended
• Review by "Kib" (in French)

To convert any particular example to PySide the steps are as follows:

• Replace python3 in the first line with python.
• Add the following statements before the first import:

  
  from __future__ import division
  from __future__ import print_function
  from future_builtins import *
  

• Replace PyQt4 with PySide throughout (e.g., in the imports)
• If using Python 2.6 replace {} in format strings with {0}, {1}, etc., as appropriate.
• Add [0] at the end of every QFileDialog.*() function call. (In PyQt these return a—possibly empty—filename; in PySide they return a filename–filter 2-tuple, but all the examples only need the filename.)
• Replace QT_VERSION_STR with qVersion().
• Replace PYQT_VERSION_STR with PySide.__version__; you will also need to add import PySide in the imports after the future imports.
• Replace @pyqtSignature with @Slot.
• Replace def isAlive(qobj): ... with def isAlive(qobj): return Shiboken.shiboken.isValid(qobj). This assumes import Shiboken. (I learnt this from Eric Thomson.)
• Replace chr with unichr.

These conversions are sufficient in most cases. However, a few of the examples' behavior is not correct even after these changes. And unfortunately, I don't have the time to investigate.

For more information on the tools the book teaches see the Python website, the Qt Software website (makers of Qt), the Riverbank website (makers of PyQt 4), and the PySide website (makers of PySide, official Nokia-sponsored Python bindings for Qt, largely PyQt compatible). And for those interested in scientific and engineering programming the Python(x,y) Python distribution should be of interest.

See also my Python Programming Tips.

Like all my books and most of my other writings, this book was written using The Lout Typesetting System.

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