Tail-f function in qt

tzander

Your beginning idea was that you want to update whenever something new is written by the first program.
A fifo can do that, but indeed its a bit tricky.
The basic concept behind the fifo is that its blocking. So your code that reads from the fifo will never return. Not untill you delete the fifo, at least.

As such you likely want to run the read in a different thread and make it notify the main gui thread whenever a new line was successfully read.
It also means you never close the file.

devfeel

Hi Thomas...
fifo was giving some problems..so used pipe...in terminal i open my gui executable with tail command.
i.e tail -f alert.csv | ./mygui

i am getting all the values in console using qdebug...but mygui is freezing and displaying nothing.... any idea?
@QTableWidgetItem *item;
int row=0,column=0;
MainWindow::MainWindow(QWidget *parent) :
QMainWindow(parent),
ui(new Ui::MainWindow)
{
ui->setupUi(this);
ui->alertshow->setColumnWidth(0,200);
ui->alertshow->setColumnWidth(1,250);
}

MainWindow::~MainWindow()
{
delete ui;
}

void MainWindow::on_update_clicked()
{
QString line;

QTextStream in(stdin);
do
{
    qDebug()<<"inside while";
 line = in.readLine();
 qDebug()<<line;
 QString delimiterPattern(",");
 QStringList fonts = line.split(delimiterPattern);

 qDebug() <<"fonts"<< fonts;
 display(fonts);
  
}while(!line.isNull());

qDebug()<<"outside";

}

void MainWindow::display(QStringList list)
{
for(int i=0;i<list.count();i++)
{

QString li=list[i];
qDebug()<<"csv"<<li;
item=new QTableWidgetItem(li);
ui->alertshow->setItem(row,column,item);
column++;
}
}
@

SGaist

Aren't you running the do while loop forever ?

Try with line.isEmpty(), IIRC "" is empty but not null.

Hope it helps

tzander

You switched to reading a pipe, but the actual problem is not with the fifo its that your method on_update_clicked() will never return.

What you may not realize is that this means that the painting system will never do anything anymore, since its waiting for the on_update_clicked method to finish.

So, I think the fifo was a great idea, I suggest using that again.

I realize that threads are not easy, so let me suggest a different approach that will work too.
You can modify your on_update_clicked to exit when there is no data to read. See QIODevice::canReadLine()

If you get tired of pressing the button you might want to instead connect that slot up to the QIODevice::readyRead() signal from your input file.

GOod luck!

devfeel

Thanks SGaist...it didnt worked...

And Thomas i tried with fifo also...same issue...I have attached the code yesterday...if possible check...I am working on readyread as u said...

devfeel

The below code is giving error...can you please help
@QTextStream in(stdin);
QObject::connect(in, SIGNAL(readyRead()), this, SLOT(readcsv()));@

error: no matching function for call to 'MainWindow::connect(QTextStream&, const char [13], MainWindow* const, const char [11])'

SGaist

QTextStream does not have a readyRead signal, QFile does (from QIODevice).

devfeel

Evn this is not working...its not entering readcsv()
@ QFile file("alert.csv");

file.open(QIODevice::ReadOnly | QIODevice::Text);

QObject::connect(&file,SIGNAL(readyRead()),  SLOT(readcsv()));@

devfeel

"qfile wont emit signals like qio":http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qfile.html#signals

SGaist

Right ! I forgot about that.
Did you have a look at QSocketNotifier ? It might be what you need to monitor a pipe on unix.

devfeel

thanks Sgaist
@ notifier = new QSocketNotifier(STDIN_FILENO, QSocketNotifier::Read);
connect(notifier, SIGNAL(activated(int)), this, SLOT(readcsv()));@

and used repaint() function in readcsv function...now gui is showing the contents ..but gui is still freezed...
any possible solution

SGaist

Do you still have an infinite loop somewhere ?

devfeel

hi sgaist...This is the code...only using while(!line.isEmpty());
have tried with isnull() also..but same
@void MainWindow::readcsv()
{
QString line;
//ui->alertshow->repaint();
qDebug()<<"in readcsv";
QTextStream in(stdin,QIODevice::ReadOnly);

do
{
  // ui->alertshow->repaint();
    qDebug()<<"inside while";
 line = in.readLine();
 qDebug()<<line;
 QString delimiterPattern(",");
 QStringList fonts = line.split(delimiterPattern);

 qDebug() <<"fonts"<< fonts;

 display(fonts);

}while(!line.isEmpty());

qDebug()<<"outside";

}

void MainWindow::display(QStringList list)
{
ui->alertshow->repaint();
for(int i=0;i<list.count();i++)
{

QString li=list[i];
qDebug()<<"csv"<<li;
item=new QTableWidgetItem(li);
ui->alertshow->setItem(row,column,item);
column++;
}
// ui->alertshow->repaint();
}
@

SGaist

Wild idea (i don't have *nix system right now at hand)

Why don't you do a readAll() and then parse the lines from that ?

clogwog

Not sure if you would be interested, but I have abit of code that starts a tail -f as a QProcess and just redirects the output of that process to a QLineEdit

It's not hard to do, let me know and ill lookup the snippet when I get back at work on Monday.

Cheers

devfeel

Thanks clogwog...It would be very helpful if u provide the snippet.
[quote author="clogwog" date="1362136280"]Not sure if you would be interested, but I have abit of code that starts a tail -f as a QProcess and just redirects the output of that process to a QLineEdit

It's not hard to do, let me know and ill lookup the snippet when I get back at work on Monday.

Cheers[/quote]

clogwog

header:

@myclass
{
startFollowingTail();

private:

QProcess procTail;

private slot:
void readFromStdoutForTail();
}@

in constructor:

@myclass::myclass() : ..... , procTail(this)
{
connect( &procTail, SIGNAL(readyReadStandardOutput()),this, SLOT(readFromStdoutForTail()) );
}

myclass::startFollowingTail()
{
if( procTail.Running)
procTail.kill();

        QStringList alist;
        alist << "-f" << "/tmp/software_update.log";
        procTail.start("/usr/bin/tail", alist, QIODevice::ReadWrite);

}

void myclass::readFromStdoutForTail()
{
while ( procTail.canReadLine())
{
QByteArray a = procTail.readLine();
QString data = a.data();
ui->plainTextEdit->insertPlainText(data);
// scroll to end
ui->plainTextEdit->verticalScrollBar()->setValue(ui->plainTextEdit->verticalScrollBar()->maximum());
}
}@

Ulatekh

I've only tested this on Linux (Fedora Core 16) and Qt 4.8.4, but this worked like "tail -f" for me:

@volatile bool shutdown = false;
QTextStream textStream;

void tailFollow()
{
while (!shutdown)
{
if (textStream.atEnd())
QThread::sleep (1);
else
{
QString line = textStream.readLine();
// Do something with line here...
}
}
}@

In the actual code, "shutdown" and "textStream" were member variables of a QThread subclass, and tailFollow() was a method on that QThread subclass. The client would set "shutdown" to true when the loop should exit.