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QScrollArea, how do I make my central widget scrollable? [duplicate]

This question already has an answer here:
How to use QScrollArea to make scrollbars appear
(1 answer)
Closed 2 years ago.
I'm trying to turn a widget into a scrollable window. However, all I've accomplished is opening a QScrollarea that's completely independent from my central widget.
class Ui_MainWindow(object):
def mainscreen(self, MainWindow):
self.centralwidget = QtWidgets.QWidget(MainWindow)
self.scrollArea = QtWidgets.QScrollArea()
self.scrollArea.setWidget(self.centralwidget)
MainWindow.setCentralWidget(self.centralwidget)
if __name__ == "__main__":
import sys
app = QtWidgets.QApplication(sys.argv)
MainWindow = QtWidgets.QMainWindow()
ui = Ui_MainWindow()
ui.mainscreen(MainWindow)
MainWindow.show()
app.exec_()
This just opens up my MainWindow on its own, only way I get an scrollarea open is if I do self.scrollarea.show . I cant figure out how QScrollArea works, how am I supposed to do it?

Simple explanation: the scroll area has no relation with the main window, and then it's not shown when the main window is.
Never, ever modify (or imitate) files generated by pyuic
You are making some confusion around the object structure, Qt parent/ownership and how a scroll area is set up.
This is also caused by the fact that you're clearly trying to mimic the structure and behavior of a file generated by pyuic, which should never be done. Those files are intended to be directly used as they are, without any modification, and imported in the main script of your program.
Their peculiar structure is intended only for that purpose, and the way they're built is not to be emulated, as creation of UI by code should only be done by subclassing a QWidget subclass (QMainWindow, QDialog, etc); trying to imitate what they do is not only unnecessary, but most times leads to confusion, bugs and unexpected behavior, exactly like in your case.
The only valid reason to open (and just read) a file generated by pyuic is to learn how widgets are created in the setupUi, keeping in mind that the setupUi argument (usually, MainWindow for QMainWindows, Form for QWidgets, Dialog for QDialogs, unless the name of the top level widget is changed in the object inspector of designer) is the main widget on which the ui is built upon.
Manually editing those files should only be done if one really knows what she/he is doing. There are few, very rare cases for which this is considered necessary, and it's usually to workaround very specific known bugs in the uic module, that normally rise on very specific conditions and situations.
What is happening?
Then, when a QWidget instance is created with an existing widget as argument, the result is that the new widget becomes a child of the existing one.
Widget can be then reparented in various ways: by setting a widget for a scroll area using setWidget(), or by setting the widget as a central widget to a QMainWindow.
What happens with your code is that you created a new QWidget that becomes a child of the QMainWindow with the following line:
self.centralwidget = QtWidgets.QWidget(MainWindow)
Then you create a scroll area (without any parent):
self.scrollArea = QtWidgets.QScrollArea()
Widgets that are not created with a parent are normally considered top level windows, unless they are added to a layout (or manually reparented using setParent(), but that's another story), which causes the parent (the widget on which the layout is set) to take ownership of the new child widget. Otherwise, if you try to show the "parent-less" widget, it will be shown as a top level widget, meaning it will have its own window, and as any top level widget, they can only be shown by manually calling show() or setVisible(True) (and that's your case).
Then you try to set the centralwidget of the scroll area, which will result in reparenting it:
self.scrollArea.setWidget(self.centralwidget)
Finally, you're setting that widget as the central widget, which will reparent it back again to the main window, with the result that the scroll area will not have a widget anymore (QObjects, from which QWidget inherits, can only have a single parent).
MainWindow.setCentralWidget(self.centralwidget)
The correct approach
The solution is to correctly create a QWidget (or QMainWindow in your case) subclass, set the scroll area as the central widget (if you want it as that) and create a new widget for its contents:
class MainWindow(QtWidgets.QMainWindow):
def __init__(self):
super().__init__()
self.scrollArea = QtWidgets.QScrollArea()
self.setCentralWidget(self.scrollArea)
self.scrollArea.setWidgetResizable(True)
self.contents = QtWidgets.QWidget()
self.scrollArea.setWidget(self.contents)
# create a layout for the scroll area contents; using the target widget
# as argument of the layout constructor automatically sets the layout on
# the specified widget
layout = QtWidgets.QVBoxLayout(self.contents)
# the same as:
# layout = QtWidgets.QVBoxLayout()
# self.contents.setLayout(layout)
for row in range(20):
button = QtWidgets.QPushButton('button {}'.format(row + 1))
layout.addWidget(button)
if __name__ == '__main__':
import sys
app = QtWidgets.QApplication(sys.argv)
mainWindow = MainWindow()
mainWindow.show()
sys.exit(app.exec_())

Move pyqt button out of list of buttons

I have a list of pyqt4 push button and want to move the position. Since it is troublesome it make lots of buttons variable I create them through a list. The code below
import sys
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QPushButton, QWidget, QVBoxLayout
class Window(QWidget):
def __init__(self):
QWidget.__init__(self)
layout = QVBoxLayout(self)
self.buttons = []
for i in range(3):
self.buttons.append(QPushButton('',self))
self.buttons[-1].setFixedWidth(50)
self.buttons[-1].setFixedHeight(50)
self.buttons[-1].move(70*i+50,300)
layout.addWidget(self.buttons[-1])
if __name__ == '__main__':
import sys
app = QApplication(sys.argv)
window = Window()
window.resize(500,500)
window.show()
sys.exit(app.exec_())
don't work for specify the position
but
class Window(QWidget):
def __init__(self):
QWidget.__init__(self)
layout = QVBoxLayout(self)
self.button1 = QPushButton('',self)
self.button1.setFixedWidth(50)
self.button1.setFixedHeight(50)
self.button1.move(50,300)
self.button2 = QPushButton('',self)
self.button2.setFixedWidth(50)
self.button2.setFixedHeight(50)
self.button2.move(120,300)
self.button3 = QPushButton('',self)
self.button3.setFixedWidth(50)
self.button3.setFixedHeight(50)
self.button3.move(190,300)
layout = QVBoxLayout(self)
layout.addWidget(self.button1)
layout.addWidget(self.button2)
layout.addWidget(self.button3)
works fine.
What's the reason behind?

If you want to manually specify the geometry (position and size) of widgets, you should not add them to a layout.
Your second example "works" just because you already created and set a layout to the top-level widget (the Window class), and since a layout already exists the second one is not "installed". Running it from the console will shows this error:
StdErr: QLayout: Attempting to add QLayout "" to Window "", which already has a layout
When a widget is added to a layout, the ownership of the "layout item" (an abstract item used by layouts to manage its widgets) is transferred to the layout, and the widget is reparented to the widget that uses that layout.
Since the second layout cannot be set, it will not manage the geometries of the items you tried to add, and the result is that they will keep the geometries you set before.
The same result can be obtained if you remove all the last lines referencing the other layout, which is exactly what you need.
Also, note that in order to add a widget that is not managed by a layout, a parent is required. Your last example also works because you specified the window as the parent while instantiating them; if you don't do that the buttons will not be shown, but if you do show them (with show() or setVisible(True)) they will each appear in separate windows, as they will become their own top level windows.
If you don't have other widgets that should be managed by a layout, you can also avoid creating the first layout at all (but, still, the parent is required).
Finally, let me tell you that using manual geometries is generally discouraged, and there are very few and specific cases for which it's a good idea to go with.
The main reason behind this is that widgets tend to show very differently from device to device, and that depends on various aspects:
different OS and OS versions draw widgets differently (sometimes dramatically), and this involves varying the widget size and behavior; while this might not be a major issue for simple widgets, it can be a problem for things like item views, spinboxes, etc;
different OS and systems use different styles, which also includes things like internal widget content margins and minimum size;
specific system settings (most importantly, the default font) could make widgets mostly unreadable, specifically with text being clipped within the widget margins if the font size is too big;
depending on the OS, you might face issues if the system uses High DPI displays, and you could end up with very tiny widgets that are almost impossible to interact with;
fixed geometries force you (and the user) to have a fixed widget/window size, and (along with the DPI issue above) this can be a problem: the same widget could look too big or too small;

How to add scrollbars in PyQt4 WITHOUT with absolute positioning

I'm creating an interface in PyQt4, and I am in need of scrollbars. My interface uses absolute positioning. I have looked a other treads for adding scrollbars, but the only answers given are to those interfaces without a layout (such as VBoxLayout, Grid Layout, etc).
Please take a look at my code. How could I add a scrollbars (horizontal and vertical) to this interface?
The full code wouldn't format properly on here, so I'll link to this pastebin
http://pastebin.com/hEH4R534
Here is the base of the interface (a 1500px by 1000px window)
class Example(QtGui.QWidget):
def __init__(self):
super(Example, self).__init__()
self.initUI()
def initUI(self):
self.setGeometry(100,100,1500,1000)
def main():
import sys
app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
window = Example()
window.show()
sys.exit(app.exec_())
main()
The question is... How would I modify the code above so I have horizontal and vertical scrollbars?

Only widgets that inherit from QAbstractScrollArea can have scroll bars. You could place one of those widgets inside your widget, and then place other widgets inside that widget. Or, just have your widget inherit from QScrollArea instead of QWidget.
By default, scroll bars will only appear when necessary to display hidden child widgets. You can force scroll bars to appear by setting the scroll bar policy for the widget.
from PyQt4.QtCore import Qt
...
def initUI(self):
self.setGeometry(100, 100, 1500, 1000)
self.setHorizontalScrollBarPolicy(Qt.ScrollBarAlwaysOn)
self.setVerticalScrollBarPolicy(Qt.ScrollBarAlwaysOn)

QBoxLayouts with Python

Because of their high customizability I've been relying on using multiple GroupBoxes while building app GUIs. But it appears QGroupBoxes make a certain impact on how fast an interface builds.
Now with layout's .insertLayout() method I can build an entire graphics interface placing the widgets any where I want. The dialogs feel very lightweight and extremely fast to re-draw. Unfortunately I can't find a way to control their appearance. I would appreciate if you would give me some clue on how to control the layout visual properties. I am particularly interested in knowing:
How to draw layout border, how to control a border line width,
How to place a layout title (similar to what QGroupBox's .setTitle() does)
How to control the layout outside and inside margins.
How to make layout minimizable/size-restorable (So the user could click some minus/arrow icon to fold/unfold layout when they need or don't need certain widgets belonging to the same layout.
The example with three nested layouts is posted below. As it is seen on dialog screenshot there is no way to visually differentiate one layout from another since there are no border, no titles, no dividers and etc.
from PyQt4 import QtGui, QtCore
class Dialog_01(QtGui.QMainWindow):
def __init__(self):
super(QtGui.QMainWindow,self).__init__()
tabWidget = QtGui.QTabWidget()
tabGroupBox = QtGui.QGroupBox()
tabLayout = QtGui.QVBoxLayout()
tabLayout.setContentsMargins(0, 0, 0, 0)
tabLayout.setSpacing(0)
subLayoutA=QtGui.QVBoxLayout()
tabLayout.insertLayout(0, subLayoutA)
tabGroupBox.setLayout(tabLayout)
tabWidget.addTab(tabGroupBox,' Tab A ')
listWidgetA = QtGui.QListWidget()
for i in range(3):
QtGui.QListWidgetItem( 'Item '+str(i), listWidgetA )
subLayoutA.addWidget(listWidgetA)
subLayoutB=QtGui.QHBoxLayout()
tabLayout.insertLayout(1, subLayoutB)
subLayoutB.addWidget(QtGui.QLineEdit('LineEdit 1'))
subLayoutB.addWidget(QtGui.QLineEdit('LineEdit 2'))
subLayoutC=QtGui.QVBoxLayout()
tabLayout.insertLayout(2, subLayoutC)
subLayoutC.addWidget(QtGui.QPushButton('PushButton 1'))
subLayoutC.addWidget(QtGui.QPushButton('PushButton 2'))
self.setCentralWidget(tabWidget)
if __name__ == '__main__':
app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
dialog_1 = Dialog_01()
dialog_1.show()
dialog_1.resize(480,320)
sys.exit(app.exec_())
EDITED LATER
I inserted two lines into an example code to implement one of the suggestions made by sebastian. A Spacing-Margins method combos can be effectively used to get some additional tweaks done. Here is a screenshot (still could not get rid of the spacing around pushButtons):

QLayout sublcasses don't have a visual representation, which becomes clear by the fact that QLayout classes do not inherit QWidget. They only calculate the positions of the widgets they are responsible for in the context of their "parent" widget.
So the answer to questions 1,2 and 4 is basically: You can't.
You'll always have to have a QWidget in combination with a QLayout.
E.g. to group your two buttons into a frame with a box use a QFrame:
subLayoutC=QtGui.QVBoxLayout()
buttonFrame = QtGui.QFrame()
buttonFrame.setFrameStyle(QtGui.QFrame.Plain |QtGui.QFrame.Box)
buttonFrame.setLayout(subLayoutC)
subLayoutC.addWidget(QtGui.QPushButton('PushButton 1'))
subLayoutC.addWidget(QtGui.QPushButton('PushButton 2'))
# now we add the QFrame widget - not subLayoutC to the tabLayout
tabLayout.addWidget(buttonFrame) # I think your suggested edit was correct here
self.setCentralWidget(tabWidget)
Concerning question 3, check the docs:
http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qlayout.html#setContentsMargins
http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qboxlayout.html#setSpacing

PyQt: getting widgets to resize automatically in a QDialog

I'm having difficulty getting widgets in a QDialog resized automatically when the dialog itself is resized.
In the following program, the textarea resizes automatically if you resize the main window. However, the textarea within the dialog stays the same size when the dialog is resized.
Is there any way of making the textarea in the dialog resize automatically? I've tried using setSizePolicy(QSizePolicy.Ignored, QSizePolicy.Ignored) on the dialog itself and the two widgets within, but that seems to have no effect.
I'm using Qt version 3.3.7 and PyQt version 3.5.5-29 on openSuSE 10.2, if that's relevant.
import sys
from qt import *
# The numbers 1 to 1000 as a string.
NUMBERS = ("%d " * 1000) % (tuple(range(1,1001)))
# Add a textarea containing the numbers 1 to 1000 to the given
# QWidget.
def addTextArea(parent, size):
textbox = QTextEdit(parent)
textbox.setReadOnly(True)
textbox.setMinimumSize(QSize(size, size*0.75))
textbox.setText(NUMBERS)
class TestDialog(QDialog):
def __init__(self,parent=None):
QDialog.__init__(self,parent)
self.setCaption("Dialog")
everything = QVBox(self)
addTextArea(everything, 400)
everything.resize(everything.sizeHint())
class TestMainWindow(QMainWindow):
def __init__(self,parent=None):
QMainWindow.__init__(self,parent)
self.setCaption("Main Window")
everything = QVBox(self)
addTextArea(everything, 800)
button = QPushButton("Open dialog", everything)
self.connect(button, SIGNAL('clicked()'), self.openDialog)
self.setCentralWidget(everything)
self.resize(self.sizeHint())
self.dialog = TestDialog(self)
def openDialog(self):
self.dialog.show()
if __name__ == '__main__':
app = QApplication(sys.argv)
mainwin = TestMainWindow(None)
app.setMainWidget(mainwin)
mainwin.show()
app.exec_loop()

QMainWindow has special behavior for the central widget that a QDialog does not. To achieve the desired behavior you need to create a layout, add the text area to the layout and assign the layout to the dialog.

Just to add a little note about this - I was trying to have a child window spawned from an application, which is a QDialog, containing a single QTextEdit as a child/content - and I wanted the QTextEdit to resize automatically whenever the QDialog window size changes. This seems to have done the trick for me with PyQt4:
def showTextWindow(self):
#QVBox, QHBox # don't exist in Qt4
dialog = QDialog(self)
#dialog.setGeometry(QRect(100, 100, 400, 200))
dialog.setWindowTitle("Title")
dialog.setAttribute(QtCore.Qt.WA_DeleteOnClose)
textbox = QTextEdit(dialog)
textbox.setReadOnly(True)
textbox.setMinimumSize(QSize(400, 400*0.75))
textbox.setText("AHAAA!")
# this seems enough to have the QTextEdit
# autoresize to window size changes of dialog!
layout = QHBoxLayout(dialog)
layout.addWidget(textbox)
dialog.setLayout(layout)
dialog.exec_()

I had looked at using a QLayout before but had no luck. I was trying to do something like
dialog.setLayout(some_layout)
but I couldn't get that approach to work so I gave up.
My mistake was that I was trying to pass the layout to the dialog when I should have been passing the dialog to the layout.
Adding the lines
layout = QVBoxLayout(self)
layout.add(everything)
to the end of TestDialog.__init__ fixes the problem.
Thanks to Monjardin for prompting me to reconsider layouts.

Check out Python QT Automatic Widget Resizer It's suppose to work well.