How to implement Qt4 widgets written in C++ into some Python code?

Question

In I my attempts at creating a GUI (a document viewer) with PyQt4, failing reproduce the quality of existing programs, it has been suggested I should use those existing program's Qt4 Widgets (Okular's to be precise), rather than re-inventing the wheel.

Fair enough, but those Qt4 widgets are written in C++: how am I supposed to call them from the Python side? And does it require me to learn C (in which case I'd rather put more time in figuring out a fully Pythonic solution)?

Corrected questions as Mata pointed out Qt is written in C++, and not C as I first had assumed. — neydroydrec
– neydroydrec, Commented May 23, 2012 at 21:28

mata · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-23 20:03:51Z

1

Qt isn't written in C, its's written in C++, and so is Okular.

Unfortunately getting C++ libraries to work with python is not as easy as using C libraries through ctypes. To do that, you'll need to write some wrapper code around the C++ APIs to get it working.
Some ways to do that:

sip - used by PyQt
shiboken - used by PySide
cython can also be used to wrap C++, don't know if it plays well with Qt

answered May 23, 2012 at 20:03

mata

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2 Comments

neydroydrec Over a year ago

OK. So supposing I need a module from Okular, say a PDFViewer widget, I can simply follow the C++ example on the SIP documentation. Then after creating those scripts, I could simply import the modules and their class as if those were written in Python? It sounds too good to be true.

mata Over a year ago

yes, however you'll still have to write all the sip definition code.

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