Advice about the application I will be making? (I'm a beginner)

[dvlpr.bernard]

So the application that I will be making is kinda Quiz game with different topics. So I probably need more than 60 pages/window to make it and I have no idea how will I do it.

It was my first time making an app and using Qt. Could anyone give some advice about the things I should consider or guide me on how to do it?

Thanks in advance :)

[mrjj]

Hi
well, first you should consider what data that makes up a question/quiz item.
Im just assuming here as i don't know what the quiz is about.
Let say we have a Question that can have a title and 2 or more answers and
maybe also a category.
The first step would be to define a structure to hold this information
like
struct Question {
QString Title;
QStringList Answers;
QString Category;
}

That we would keep in a list
QList<Question> AllQuestions.

so we can take them from there to show on screen.

To help more, can you please tell a bit about how it should work ?
shall it select random questions from all categories or keep track of which one
already been used etc.

• Write a list of how it should work.
  Not so much how you wil code it, just the requirements for the app.
  I assume you also need to load questions from file ?

Im not sure you really need 60 pages as we could also just show one or more
questions at a time and when we press Next, simply load new ones. (from the list)

[dvlpr.bernard]

This post is deleted!

[dvlpr.bernard]

I have no idea how I'm going to handle an enormous amount of data. Each Topic has 3 difficulty level with 5 questions each. To sum it up, the total of questions are 75.

Can I use Stack Widget in QT Widget Application for this app or is there any other way of doing this? Please let me know :)

Thanks in advance.

[mrjj]

@dvlpr.bernard
Hi
QStackWidget will fit pretty fine for the pages with Topic/Level/num questions.
Notice that Widgets can be styled (much like css for web)
and you can build the ap first using the normal look and after apply a stylesheet to get the exact look.
https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/stylesheet-reference.html

The wrong / Correct answer could be a QDialog subclass that pops over the Stacked.

If you come from web/html side, are you used to databases ?
This would fit nicely to store the categories and questions in sqllite db.
Qt has great support for it. However, this requires you to know SQL somewhat.

Btw: do you want to make this a phone app ?

[dvlpr.bernard]

@mrjj
Uhmmm. Yes, I did recognize that stylesheet it's kinda like css or maybe it is a true css.
I'll take note of that QDialog.

No, I had not used a database before and sqlite sounds interesting to me. Is it the key to manage my data? I'll take note of that.

Yes, it is for a phone. Thank you again for your response :)

[mrjj]

@dvlpr.bernard
ah. well while QWidgets are also fine for phone apps, there is also QML
https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtqml-index.html
Which was designed for the mobile generation.
It allows much freedom in look and fell and are fully touch enabled and optimized for mobile usage.
It is however, very different from c++.

I suggest you try it out and see if that would not be a better fit.
https://qmlbook.github.io/

some c++ might be needed to create the data backend.

But much of the logic will be javascript.

[dvlpr.bernard]

@mrjj
I see. Is there a touch-enabled for QT Widget Application? Or the user wouldn't be able to feel that it is made for mobile and not for desktop?

I actually have no time to learn many things because of the deadline. Less than a month it will be presented in our school so what do you think is the best cave to go in to?

[mrjj]

@dvlpr.bernard
hi
Well QWidgets does support touch to some degree. Like clicking/pressing,
but not so much slide/swipe and the other normal mobile gestures.
Also scrollbars and the like are default too small to use. (but its fixable)

Well if you know javascript besides c++ then QML is pretty smooth.
If you have not worked with javascript and c++ is more your thing, i would
go with QWidgets.

That said. If you know web development, have you considered a browser-based solution?

What is your main programming language ?

[dvlpr.bernard]

I will consider looking at QML. QWidget was my first choice for now.

My main programming language is C++. I have not done any javascript before. And I probably don't wanna go with browser-based solution because the required language for our project is c++.

[mrjj]

@dvlpr.bernard
Ok, c++ it is.
The Stacked widget should work fine.
However, regarding the sqllite database. Im not sure its worth digging into
SQL for mere 75 questions.
You could just as easy store it in a text file or for a bit more structure use JSON which
Qt has direct support for.

[dvlpr.bernard]

@mrjj
Sorry but, can you Elaborate? I don't need SQLite because JSON could do the work for me?
Thank you :)

[dvlpr.bernard]

@mrjj
Hi. I will try to learn QML. What do you think is the best fit for my app the QT Quick Application - Stack or QT Quick Application - Swipe?
And what are the best resources to learn it out there?

Thank you again in advance :)

[dvlpr.bernard]

QML seems pretty gorgeous with the user interface. But how am I'm going to work with the back-end kinda stuff??

[dvlpr.bernard]

@mrjj
If Javascript is the language for QML then that would be bad because the required languange for the app is c++.

[KillerSmath]

@dvlpr.bernard
You could write the backend on c++ and expose an object from C++ to QML.
https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtqml-cppintegration-contextproperties.html
https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtqml-cppintegration-exposecppattributes.html.

[dvlpr.bernard]

@mrjj Good day sir!

I was just wondering how am I going to present the data? Should I store all the interface in one Stack Widget or do I need another window or another Stack Widget? :)

And also I consider looking at SQLite. Where would I store the questions kinda thing or the output to compare to the user input? Thank you again in advance :)

[dvlpr.bernard]

Or it should look like these?
What are the things I need to consider :)

[mrjj]

Hi
Last table looks ok. I assume then all question is a topic and the answer is some
text. No mutiple choice or anything like that ?

Since we will have few questions (75) its ok to include the difficult_level
as text. If we were to have thousands of questions, it would be better to have a table for the texts ( Beginner, Average etc) and reference it from Question table.
However, we just directly included it here for simplicity.

Next step could be to try use table in Qt
https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtsql-index.html
https://katecpp.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/sqlite-with-qt/

Things to consider:
Define the operations you need, like
select questions from a diff_level
keeping track of already used questions (if needed ?)

[KillerSmath]

I was just wondering how am I going to present the data? Should I store all the interface in one Stack Widget or do I need another window or another Stack Widget? :)

I suppose you pretent to use QML. So you can store the data in a model and display components on window depending of your data.

Swipe View
Stack View

Below is a idea of how you could to implement it with Swipe View (No Interative Mode)

// Qt 5.11
import QtQuick 2.11
import QtQuick.Window 2.11
import QtQuick.Controls 2.2
import QtQuick.Layouts 1.11

Window {
    visible: true
    width: 640
    height: 480
    title: qsTr("Hello World")

    ListModel{
        id: databaseModel
        ListElement{
            topic: "While Loop"
            dificulty: 3
            question_num: 3
            question_text: "While Loop 3,3"
        }

        ListElement{
            topic: "While Loop"
            dificulty: 3
            question_num: 4
            question_text: "While Loop 3,4"
        }
    }

    SwipeView {
        id: view
        anchors.fill: parent
        anchors.bottomMargin: 20
        interactive: false
        currentIndex: pageIndicator.currentIndex
        Repeater {
            model: databaseModel
            Loader {
                active: SwipeView.isCurrentItem || SwipeView.isNextItem || SwipeView.isPreviousItem
                sourceComponent: Page{
                    Rectangle{
                        width: view.width / 2
                        height: view.height / 2
                        color: "white"
                        anchors.centerIn: parent

                        Text{
                            anchors.centerIn: parent
                            text: "Question: " + model.question_text
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

    PageIndicator {
        id: pageIndicator
        count: databaseModel.count
        interactive: true
        currentIndex: 0
        anchors.bottom: parent.bottom
        anchors.horizontalCenter: parent.horizontalCenter

    }

}

Note: the listModel (Data) and Game Logic can be implemented from c++.

And also I consider looking at SQLite. Where would I store the questions kinda thing or the output to compare to the user input? Thank you again in advance :)

Firstly, it may be implement of several ways...
You can insert a Json text with correct_answer index and answers.
Or create an array of text and correct_answer field (i'm not sure how it could be implemented).

Json Example:

{
   "correct_answer": 0,
   "answers": [
      "Answer 1",
      "Answer 2",
      "Answer 3"
   ]
}

Also, the difficulty_level don't need to be a string field. You can storage an intenger number 1-3 and interpret it in your app. 1 -> Beginner, 2 -> Intermediate.

I recommend you to read these materials to understand the Relational Database Concepts:
Telvents - RDBMS Concepts
TutorialsPoint - RDBMS Concepts