1.1   License

Like Qt v4, PyQt is licensed on all platforms under a commercial license and the GPL v2. Your PyQt license must be the same as your Qt license, ie. use either the commercial versions of both or the GPL versions of both. If you use the GPL versions then your own code must also be licensed under the GPL.

You can purchase a commercial PyQt license here.

1.2   PyQt Components

PyQt comprises a number of different components. First of all there are a number of Python extension modules. These are all installed in the PyQt4 Python package.

• The QtCore module. This contains the core non-GUI classes, including the event loop and Qt's signal and slot mechanism. It also includes platform independent abstractions for Unicode, threads, regular expressions, and user and application settings.
• The QtGui module. This contains the majority of the GUI classes.
• The QtNetwork module. This module contains classes for writing UDP and TCP clients and servers. It includes classes that implement FTP and HTTP clients and support DNS lookups.
• The QtOpenGL module. This module contains classes that enable the use of OpenGL in rendering 3D graphics in PyQt applications.
• The QtSql module. This module contains classes that integrate with SQL databases. It includes editable data models for database tables that can be used with GUI classes. It also includes an implementation of SQLite.
• The QtSvg module. This module contains classes for displaying the contents of SVG files.
• The QtTest module. This module contains functions that enable unit testing of PyQt applications. (PyQt does not implement the complete Qt unit test framework. Instead it assumes that the standard Python unit test framework will be used and implements those functions that simulate a user interacting with a GUI.)
• The QtXml module. This module contains classes that implement SAX and DOM interfaces to Qt's XML parser.
• The QtAssistant module. This module contains classes that allow Qt Assistant to be integrated with a PyQt application to provide online help.
• The QAxContainer module. This module contains classes that allow access to ActiveX controls and COM objects. It is only available in the commercial version of PyQt for Windows.
• The Qt module. This module consolidates the classes contained in all of the modules described above into a single module. This has the advantage that you don't have to worry about which underlying module contains a particular class. It has the disadvantage that it loads the whole of the Qt framework, thereby increasing the memory footprint of an application. Whether you use this consolidated module, or the individual component modules is down to personal taste.
• The uic module. This module contains classes for handling the .ui files created by Qt Designer that describe the whole or part of a graphical user interface. It includes classes that load a .ui file and render it directly, and classes that generate Python code from a .ui file for later execution. It is covered in detail in The uic Module.
• The pyqtconfig module is an extention of the SIP build system and is created when PyQt is configured. It encapsulates all the necessary information about your Qt installation and makes it easier to write installation scripts for bindings built on top of PyQt. It is covered in detail in The PyQt Build System.

PyQt also contains a number of utility programs.

• pyuic4 corresponds to the Qt uic utility. It converts GUIs created using Qt Designer to Python code. It is covered in detail in pyuic4.
• pyrcc4 corresponds to the Qt rcc utility. It embeds arbitrary resources (eg. icons, images, translation files) described by a resource collection file in a Python module. It is covered in detail in pyrcc4. (Note It will only be included if your copy of Qt includes the XML module.)
• pylupdate4 corresponds to the Qt lupdate utility. It extracts all of the translatable strings from Python code and creates or updates .ts translation files. These are then used by Qt Linguist to manage the translation of those strings. It is covered in detail in pylupdate4. (Note It will only be included if your copy of Qt includes the XML module.)

When PyQt is configured a file called PyQt4.api is generated. This can be used by the QScintilla editor component (at http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/qscintilla/) to enable the use of auto-completion and call tips when editing PyQt code. The API file is installed automatically if QScintilla is already installed.

PyQt includes a large number of examples. These are ports to Python of many of the C++ examples provided with Qt. They can be found in the examples directory.

Finally, PyQt contains the .sip files used by SIP to generate PyQt itself. These can be used by developers of bindings of other Qt based class libraries - for example PyQwt and PyQwt3D.

2.1   Downloading SIP

SIP must be installed before building and using PyQt. You can get the latest release of the SIP source code from http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/sip/download.php.

The SIP documentation can be found at http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/Docs/sip4/sipref.html.

2.2   Downloading PyQt

You can get the latest release of the GPL version of the PyQt source code from http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/pyqt/download.php.

If you are using the commercial version of PyQt then you should use the download instructions which were sent to you when you made your purchase. You must also download your license file.

2.3   Configuring PyQt

After unpacking the source package (either a .tar.gz or a .zip file depending on your platform) you should then check for any README files that relate to your platform.

If you are using the commercial version of PyQt then you must copy your license file to the sip directory.

You need to make sure your environment variables are set properly for your development environment. For example, if you are using a binary distribution of Qt on Windows then make sure you have run the qtvars.bat file. For other platforms it is normally enough to ensure that Qt's bin directory is on your PATH.

Next you need to configure SIP by executing the configure.py script. For example:

python configure.py

This assumes that the Python interpreter is on your path. Something like the following may be appropriate on Windows:

c:\python25\python configure.py

If you have multiple versions of Python installed then make sure you use the interpreter for which you wish to build PyQt for.

The full set of command line options is:

2.4   Building PyQt

The next step is to build PyQt by running your platform's make command. For example:

make

The final step is to install PyQt by running the following command:

make install

(Depending on your system you may require root or administrator privileges.)

This will install the various PyQt components.

3.1   PyQt Signals and Qt Signals

Qt signals are statically defined as part of a C++ class. They are referenced using the QtCore.SIGNAL() function. This method takes a single string argument that is the name of the signal and its C++ signature. For example:

QtCore.SIGNAL("finished(int)")

The returned value is normally passed to the QtCore.QObject.connect() method.

PyQt allows new signals to be defined dynamically. The act of emitting a PyQt signal implicitly defines it. PyQt v4 signals are also referenced using the QtCore.SIGNAL() function.

3.2   The PyQt_PyObject Signal Argument Type

It is possible to pass any Python object as a signal argument by specifying PyQt_PyObject as the type of the argument in the signature. For example:

QtCore.SIGNAL("finished(PyQt_PyObject)")

While this would normally used for passing objects like lists and dictionaries as signal arguments, it can be used for any Python type. Its advantage when passing, for example, an integer is that the normal conversions from a Python object to a C++ integer and back again are not required.

The reference count of the object being passed is maintained automatically. There is no need for the emitter of a signal to keep a reference to the object after the call to QtCore.QObject.emit(), even if a connection is queued.

3.3   Short-circuit Signals

There is also a special form of a PyQt v4 signal known as a short-circuit signal. Short-circut signals implicitly declare each argument as being of type PyQt_PyObject.

Short-circuit signals do not have a list of arguments or the surrounding parentheses.

Short-circuit signals may only be connected to slots that have been implemented in Python. They cannot be connected to Qt slots or the Python callables that wrap Qt slots.

3.4   PyQt Slots and Qt Slots

Qt slots are statically defined as part of a C++ class. They are referenced using the QtCore.SLOT() function. This method takes a single string argument that is the name of the slot and its C++ signature. For example:

QtCore.SLOT("done(int)")

The returned value is normally passed to the QtCore.QObject.connect() method.

PyQt allows any Python callable to be used as a slot, not just Qt slots. This is done by simply referencing the callable. Because Qt slots are implemented as class methods they are also available as Python callables. Therefore it is never actually necessary to use QtCore.SLOT() for Qt slots. However, doing so is more efficient as signal delivery happens at the C++ level and avoids a conversion to Python and back to C++.

Qt allows a signal to be connected to a slot that requires fewer arguments than the signal passes. The extra arguments are quietly discarded. PyQt slots can be used in the same way.

Note that when a slot is a Python callable its reference count is not increased. This means that a class instance can be deleted without having to explicitly disconnect any signals connected to its methods. However, if a slot is a lambda function then its reference count is automatically incremented to prevent it from being immediately garbage collected.

3.5   Connecting Signals and Slots

Connections between signals and slots (and other signals) are made using the QtCore.QObject.connect() method. For example:

QtCore.QObject.connect(a, QtCore.SIGNAL("QtSig()"), pyFunction)
QtCore.QObject.connect(a, QtCore.SIGNAL("QtSig()"), pyClass.pyMethod)
QtCore.QObject.connect(a, QtCore.SIGNAL("QtSig()"), b, QtCore.SLOT("QtSlot()"))
QtCore.QObject.connect(a, QtCore.SIGNAL("PySig()"), b, QtCore.SLOT("QtSlot()"))
QtCore.QObject.connect(a, QtCore.SIGNAL("PySig"), pyFunction)

Disconnecting signals works in exactly the same way using the QtCore.QObject.disconnect() method. However, not all the variations of that method are supported by PyQt. Signals must be disconnected one at a time.

3.6   Emitting Signals

Any instance of a class that is derived from the QtCore.QObject class can emit a signal using its emit() method. This takes a minimum of one argument which is the signal. Any other arguments are passed to the connected slots as the signal arguments. For example:

a.emit(QtCore.SIGNAL("clicked()"))
a.emit(QtCore.SIGNAL("pySig"), "Hello", "World")

3.7   The QtCore.pyqtSignature() Decorator

PyQt supports the QtCore.QMetaObject.connectSlotsByName() function that is most commonly used by pyuic4 generated Python code to automatically connect signals to slots that conform to a simple naming convention. However, where a class has overloaded Qt signals (ie. with the same name but with different arguments) PyQt needs additional information in order to automatically connect the correct signal.

For example the QtGui.QSpinBox class has the following signals:

void valueChanged(int i);
void valueChanged(const QString &text);

When the value of the spin box changes both of these signals will be emitted. If you have implemented a slot called on_spinbox_valueChanged (which assumes that you have given the QSpinBox instance the name spinbox) then it will be connected to both variations of the signal. Therefore, when the user changes the value, your slot will be called twice - once with an integer argument, and once with a QString argument.

This also happens with signals that take optional arguments. Qt implements this using multiple signals. For example, QtGui.QAbstractButton has the following signal:

void clicked(bool checked = false);

Qt implements this as the following:

void clicked();
void clicked(bool checked);

PyQt includes a Python function decorator that can be used to specify which of the signals should be connected to the slot. The decorator takes a string containing the required signal's signature, excluding the parentheses. If you were only interested in the integer variant of the signal then your slot definition would look like the following:

@QtCore.pyqtSignature("int")
def on_spinbox_valueChanged(self, i):
    # i will be an integer.
    pass

The following shows an example using a button when you are not interested in the optional argument:

@QtCore.pyqtSignature("")
def on_button_clicked(self):
    pass

4.1   Using the Generated Code

The code that is generated has an identical structure to that generated by Qt's uic and can be used in the same way.

The code is structured as a single class that is derived from the Python object type. The name of the class is the name of the toplevel object set in Designer with Ui_ prepended. (In the C++ version the class is defined in the Ui namespace.) We refer to this class as the form class.

The class contains a method called setupUi(). This takes a single argument which is the widget in which the user interface is created. The type of this argument (typically QDialog, QWidget or QMainWindow) is set in Designer. We refer to this type as the Qt base class.

In the following examples we assume that a .ui file has been created containing a dialog and the name of the QDialog object is ImageDialog. We also assume that the name of the file containing the generated Python code is ui_imagedialog.py. The generated code can then be used in a number of ways.

The first example shows the direct approach where we simply create a simple application to create the dialog:

import sys
from PyQt4 import QtGui
from ui_imagedialog import Ui_ImageDialog

app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
window = QtGui.QDialog()
ui = Ui_ImageDialog()
ui.setupUi(window)

window.show()
sys.exit(app.exec_())

The second example shows the single inheritance approach where we sub-class QDialog and set up the user interface in the __init__() method:

from PyQt4 import QtCore, QtGui
from ui_imagedialog import Ui_ImageDialog

class ImageDialog(QtGui.QDialog):
    def __init__(self):
        QtGui.QDialog.__init__(self)

        # Set up the user interface from Designer.
        self.ui = Ui_ImageDialog()
        self.ui.setupUi(self)

        # Make some local modifications.
        self.ui.colorDepthCombo.addItem("2 colors (1 bit per pixel)")

        # Connect up the buttons.
        self.connect(self.ui.okButton, QtCore.SIGNAL("clicked()"),
                     self, QtCore.SLOT("accept()"))
        self.connect(self.ui.cancelButton, QtCore.SIGNAL("clicked()"),
                     self, QtCore.SLOT("reject()"))

The third example shows the multiple inheritance approach:

from PyQt4 import QtCore, QtGui
from ui_imagedialog import Ui_ImageDialog

class ImageDialog(QtGui.QDialog, Ui_ImageDialog):
    def __init__(self):
        QtGui.QDialog.__init__(self)

        # Set up the user interface from Designer.
        self.setupUi(self)

        # Make some local modifications.
        self.colorDepthCombo.addItem("2 colors (1 bit per pixel)")

        # Connect up the buttons.
        self.connect(self.okButton, QtCore.SIGNAL("clicked()"),
                     self, QtCore.SLOT("accept()"))
        self.connect(self.cancelButton, QtCore.SIGNAL("clicked()"),
                     self, QtCore.SLOT("reject()"))

For a full description see the Qt Designer Manual in the Qt Documentation.

4.2   The uic Module

The uic module contains the following functions.

compileUi(uifile, pyfile, execute=False, indent=4)

This function generates the Python code that will create a user interface from a Qt Designer .ui file.

uifile is a file name or file-like object containing the .ui file.

pyfile is the file-like object to which the generated Python code will be written to.

execute is optionally set if a small amount of additional code is to be generated that will display the user interface if the code is run as a standalone application.

indent is the optional number of spaces used for indentation in the generated code. If it is zero then a tab character is used instead.

loadUiType(uifile)

This function loads a Qt Designer .ui file and returns a tuple of the generated form class and the Qt base class. These can then be used to create any number of instances of the user interface without having to parse the .ui file more than once.

uifile is a file name or file-like object containing the .ui file.

loadUi(uifile, baseinstance=None)

This function loads a Qt Designer .ui file and returns an instance of the user interface.

uifile is a file name or file-like object containing the .ui file.

baseinstance is an optional instance of the Qt base class. If specified then the user interface is created in it. Otherwise a new instance of the base class is automatically created.

4.3   pyuic4

The pyuic4 utility is a command line interface to the uic module. The command has the following syntax:

pyuic4 [options] .ui-file

The full set of command line options is:

5.1   pyrcc4

pyrcc4 is PyQt's equivalent to Qt's rcc utility and is used in exactly the same way. pyrcc4 reads the .qrc file, and the resource files, and generates a Python module that only needs to be import ed by the application in order for those resources to be made available just as if they were the original files.

pyrcc4 will only be included if your copy of Qt includes the XML module.

6.1   pylupdate4

pylupdate4 is PyQt's equivalent to Qt's lupdate utility and is used in exactly the same way. A Qt .pro project file is read that specifies the Python source files and Qt Designer interface files from which the text that needs to be translated is extracted. The .pro file also specifies the .ts translation files that pylupdate4 updates (or creates if necessary) and are subsequently used by Qt Linguist.

pylupdate4 will only be included if your copy of Qt includes the XML module.

6.2   Differences Between PyQt and Qt

Qt implements internationalisation support through the QTranslator class, and the QCoreApplication::translate(), QObject::tr() and QObject::trUtf8() methods. Usually the tr() method is used to obtain the correct translation of a message. The translation process uses a message context to allow the same message to be translated differently. tr() is actually generated by moc and uses the hardcoded class name as the context. On the other hand, QApplication::translate() allows to context to be explicitly stated.

Unfortunately, because of the way Qt implements tr() (and trUtf8()) it is not possible for PyQt to exactly reproduce its behavour. The PyQt implementation of tr() (and trUtf8()) uses the class name of the instance as the context. The key difference, and the source of potential problems, is that the context is determined dynamically in PyQt, but is hardcoded in Qt. In other words, the context of a translation may change depending on an instance's class hierarchy. For example:

class A(QtCore.QObject):
    def hello(self):
        return self.tr("Hello")

class B(A):
    pass

a = A()
a.hello()

b = B()
b.hello()

In the above the message is translated by a.hello() using a context of A, and by b.hello() using a context of B. In the equivalent C++ version the context would be A in both cases.

The PyQt behaviour is unsatisfactory and may be changed in the future. It is recommended that QCoreApplication.translate() be used in preference to tr() (and trUtf8()). This is guaranteed to work with current and future versions of PyQt and makes it much easier to share message files between Python and C++ code. Below is the alternative implementation of A that uses QCoreApplication.translate():

class A(QtCore.QObject):
    def hello(self):
        return QtCore.QCoreApplication.translate("A", "Hello")

7.1   Python Strings, Qt Strings and Unicode

Unicode support was added to Qt in v2.0 and to Python in v1.6. In Qt, Unicode support is implemented using the QString class. It is important to understand that QString instances, Python string objects and Python Unicode objects are all different but conversions between them are automatic in almost all cases and easy to achieve manually when needed.

Whenever PyQt expects a QString as a function argument, a Python string object or a Python Unicode object can be provided instead, and PyQt will do the necessary conversion automatically.

You may also manually convert Python string and Unicode objects to QString instances by using the QString constructor as demonstrated in the following code fragment:

qs1 = QtCore.QString("Converted Python string object")
qs2 = QtCore.QString(u"Converted Python Unicode object")

In order to convert a QString to a Python string object use the Python str() builtin. Applying str() to a null QString and an empty QString both result in an empty Python string object.

In order to convert a QString to a Python Unicode object use the Python unicode() builtin. Applying unicode() to a null QString and an empty QString both result in an empty Python Unicode object.

QString also implements Python's buffer protocol which means that a QString can be used in many places where a Python string or Unicode object is expected without being explicitly converted.

7.2   Garbage Collection

C++ does not garbage collect unreferenced class instances, whereas Python does. In the following C++ fragment both colours exist even though the first can no longer be referenced from within the program:

col = new QColor();
col = new QColor();

In the corresponding Python fragment, the first colour is destroyed when the second is assigned to col:

col = QtGui.QColor()
col = QtGui.QColor()

In Python, each colour must be assigned to different names. Typically this is done within class definitions, so the code fragment would be something like:

self.col1 = QtGui.QColor()
self.col2 = QtGui.QColor()

Sometimes a Qt class instance will maintain a pointer to another instance and will eventually call the destructor of that second instance. The most common example is that a QObject (and any of its sub-classes) keeps pointers to its children and will automatically call their destructors. In these cases, the corresponding Python object will also keep a reference to the corresponding child objects.

So, in the following Python fragment, the first QLabel is not destroyed when the second is assigned to lab because the parent QWidget still has a reference to it:

parent = QtGui.QWidget()
lab = QtGui.QLabel("First label", parent)
lab = QtGui.QLabel("Second label", parent)

7.3   Multiple Inheritance

It is not possible to define a new Python class that sub-classes from more than one Qt class.

7.4   Access to Protected Member Functions

When an instance of a C++ class is not created from Python it is not possible to access the protected member functions, or emit any signals, of that instance. Attempts to do so will raise a Python exception. Also, any Python methods corresponding to the instance's virtual member functions will never be called.

7.5   None and NULL

Throughout PyQt, the None value can be specified wherever NULL is acceptable to the underlying C++ code.

Equally, NULL is converted to None whenever it is returned by the underlying C++ code.

7.6   Support for void *

PyQt (actually SIP) represents void * values as objects of type sip.voidptr. Such values are often used to pass the addresses of external objects between different Python modules. To make this easier, a Python integer (or anything that Python can convert to an integer) can be used whenever a sip.voidptr is expected.

A sip.voidptr may be converted to a Python integer by using the int() builtin function.

A sip.voidptr may be converted to a Python string by using its asstring() method. The asstring() method takes an integer argument which is the length of the data in bytes.

7.7   super and PyQt Classes

Internally PyQt implements a lazy technique for attribute lookup where attributes are only placed in type and instance dictionaries when they are first referenced. This technique is needed to reduce the time taken to import large modules such as PyQt.

In most circumstances this technique is transparent to an application. The exception is when super is used with a PyQt class. The way that super is currently implemented means that the lazy lookup is bypassed resulting in AttributeError exceptions unless the attribute has been previously referenced.

Note that this restriction applies to any class wrapped by SIP and not just PyQt.

9.1   pyqtconfig Classes

Configuration(sipconfig.Configuration)

This class encapsulates configuration values that can be accessed as instance objects.

The following configuration values are provided in addition to those provided by the super-class:

pyqt_bin_dir

The name of the directory where the PyQt utilities are installed.

pyqt_config_args

The command line passed to configure.py when PyQt was configured.

pyqt_mod_dir

The name of the directory where the PyQt4 Python package is installed.

pyqt_modules

A space separated string of installed PyQt modules. The Qt module is not included.

pyqt_sip_dir

The name of the base directory where PyQt's .sip files are installed. Each module's .sip files are installed in a sub-directory with the same name as the module.

pyqt_sip_flags

A space separated string of the sip command line arguments used to build the PyQt modules. These should also be used when building bindings that %Import any PyQt modules.

pyqt_version

The PyQt version as a 3 part hexadecimal number (e.g. v4.0.1 is represented as 0x040001).

pyqt_version_str

The PyQt version as a string. For development snapshots it will start with snapshot-.

qt_data_dir

The value of QLibraryInfo::location(DataPath) for the Qt installation.

qt_dir

The root directory of the Qt installation (normally the directory that contains the bin directory).

qt_edition

The Qt edition.

qt_framework

Set if Qt is built as a MacOS/X framework.

qt_inc_dir

The value of QLibraryInfo::location(HeadersPath) for the Qt installation.

qt_lib_dir

The value of QLibraryInfo::location(LibrariesPath) for the Qt installation.

qt_threaded

Set if Qt is built with thread support (always set for PyQt).

qt_version

The Qt version as a 3 part hexadecimal number (e.g. v4.1.2 is represented as 0x040102).

qt_winconfig

Additional Windows specific configuration.

__init__(self, sub_cfg=None)

Initialise the instance.

sub_cfg is an optional list of sub-class configurations. It should only be used by the __init__() method of a sub-class to append its own dictionary of configuration values before passing the list to its super-class.

QtAssistantModuleMakefile(QtNetworkModuleMakefile)

This class encapsulates a Makefile to build a SIP generated Python extension module that is built on the PyQt QtAssistant module.

QAxContainerModuleMakefile(QtGuiModuleMakefile)

This class encapsulates a Makefile to build a SIP generated Python extension module that is built on the PyQt QAxContainer module.

QtCoreModuleMakefile(sipconfig.SIPModuleMakefile)

This class encapsulates a Makefile to build a SIP generated Python extension module that is built on the PyQt QtCore module.

QtGuiModuleMakefile(QtCoreModuleMakefile)

This class encapsulates a Makefile to build a SIP generated Python extension module that is built on the PyQt QtGui module.

QtNetworkModuleMakefile(QtCoreModuleMakefile)

This class encapsulates a Makefile to build a SIP generated Python extension module that is built on the PyQt QtNetwork module.

QtOpenGLModuleMakefile(QtGuiModuleMakefile)

This class encapsulates a Makefile to build a SIP generated Python extension module that is built on the PyQt QtOpenGL module.

QtSqlModuleMakefile(QtGuiModuleMakefile)

This class encapsulates a Makefile to build a SIP generated Python extension module that is built on the PyQt QtSql module.

QtSvgModuleMakefile(QtGuiModuleMakefile)

This class encapsulates a Makefile to build a SIP generated Python extension module that is built on the PyQt QtSvg module.

QtTestModuleMakefile(QtCoreModuleMakefile)

This class encapsulates a Makefile to build a SIP generated Python extension module that is built on the PyQt QtTest module.

QtXmlModuleMakefile(QtCoreModuleMakefile)

This class encapsulates a Makefile to build a SIP generated Python extension module that is built on the PyQt QtXml module.