Layout, widgets not inside ???

[JonB]

@SPlatten
I am just jumping in here. I have not read & digested all previous posts here, and I don't intend to, but just a comment.

Will take a good look, because the verticalLayoutWidget looks like its added by Qt Creator and is obviously required, and thats something thats missing in my code.

I did not do anything to add the mysterious verticalLayoutWidget which was added by Qt Creator. I am saying this works and its only because Qt Creator is doing something else instead of adding a QGroupBox, QVBoxLayout and child widgets.

I do not think you should have any such "verticalLayoutWidget" widget.

Dragged Vertical Layout from Layouts palette and dropped onto Group Box

This is not the right thing to do. The correct actions in Designer should be:

1. Drag QGroupBox onto canvas.
2. Next drag one QRadioButton onto the QGroupBox widget.
3. Now --- and only after step #2 can this be done --- right click on the QGroupBox. From the bottom item which reads Lay out pick Lay Out Vertically.

This is the (irritating) way Designer requires you to place a layout on a widget (took me ages to appreciate this when I first started using Designer). It does not allow you to do so till after the container has had at least one child widget added. This creates a different structure from your "Dragged Vertical Layout from Layouts palette", which you should not do. (Indeed, if you do your way in Designer and look you will see the group box has a "no entry" sign indicating this is incorrect, it is missing its own layout.)

To address whatever your issue is. By now you have spent a large amount of time asking about your existing, complex code. Instead take the example from https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qgroupbox.html#details. Get rid of all your code. Does that draw your widgets/group box/layout correctly? Assuming it does, build back from there to your real code, or down from your code to the working code. (For example, get rid of all your parsing code, just test as you incrementally add hard-coded group boxes, layouts and radiobuttons to mirror what you would like to be doing when it's actually reading your XML file.)

[SPlatten]

@JonB , thank you, I will read, digest and git it a go.

[SPlatten]

@JonB , I can get it to work easy enough in Qt Creator, but for some reason unknown to me, trying to replicate the same in code doesn't do the same.

1. I create a QGroupBox
2. I add two instances of QRadioButton to the QGroupBox by setting the QGroupBox as the parent of the QRadioButton's.
3. There is no option to select a layout in code so I set the layout using setLayout passing an instance of QVBoxLayout.

Doing this just ends up with the exact same results, the QGroupBox appears above the radio buttons and the Radio buttons are not inside the QGroupBox. I change the layout to QHBoxLayout no difference in appearance, the radio buttons still appear above each other and outside the QGroupBox.

[SGaist]

In code:

• create QGroupBox
• create buttons (no need for parent)
• create layout (without any parent !)
• add buttons to layout
• set layout on QGroupBox

Other possibility:

• create QGroupBox
• create layout (without any parent !)
• set layout on QGroupBox
• create buttons (no need for parent)
• add buttons to layout

Yet another possibility:

• create QGroupBox
• create layout with QGroupBox object as parent
• create buttons (no need for parent)
• add buttons to layout

[SPlatten]

@SGaist , thank you, will try this now.

[JonB]

@SPlatten said in Layout, widgets not inside ???:

I create a QGroupBox
I add two instances of QRadioButton to the QGroupBox by setting the QGroupBox as the parent of the QRadioButton's.
There is no option to select a layout in code so I set the layout using setLayout passing an instance of QVBoxLayout.

I referred you to copy from https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qgroupbox.html#details, all you have to do is copy the code example there. Obviously you have to add buttons onto the layout with QVBoxLayout::addWidget();, else you're not putting them on a layout. Yet you do not mention that in your steps.....??

[SPlatten]

@JonB , I have tried adding the widgets to the layout and also tried using the layout as the parent for the widgets, neither have worked.

[JonB]

@SPlatten
So, if you just copy the example on the doc page, nothing else, into a standalone program, could you screenshot the result so that we can understand what is wrong?

[SPlatten]

@JonB , just to be clear, is this what you are asking me to try out?

    QGroupBox *groupBox = new QGroupBox(tr("Exclusive Radio Buttons"));

    QRadioButton *radio1 = new QRadioButton(tr("&Radio button 1"));
    QRadioButton *radio2 = new QRadioButton(tr("R&adio button 2"));
    QRadioButton *radio3 = new QRadioButton(tr("Ra&dio button 3"));

    radio1->setChecked(true);

    QVBoxLayout *vbox = new QVBoxLayout;
    vbox->addWidget(radio1);
    vbox->addWidget(radio2);
    vbox->addWidget(radio3);
    vbox->addStretch(1);
    groupBox->setLayout(vbox);

[JonB]

@SPlatten Yep!

[SPlatten]

@JonB , will do.

[JonB]

@SPlatten
:)

And I see there is a bigger example at https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwidgets-widgets-groupbox-example.html, but just the standalone one should do.

On a separate note, and not wanting to distract you from the task at hand. You seem to have said that you can get what you want from Designer? But not from your own code. And you're not sure what Designer way has done it? But when you build you run uic on the .ui file and (IIRC) it generates ui_yourfile.h. In that is setupUi(). And that is all the code implementing whatever you have designed, there isn't anything else to it. So that code must show you how they produce what you say works?

[SPlatten]

@JonB , I've used Qt Creator to create a mock layout, adding a Group Box, 3 x Radio Buttons then selected Lay Out Vertically from the Lay Out context submenu. Closed UI, clicked on Run qmake then opened up ui_clsMainWnd.h and searched for groupBox, this I the code:

groupBox = new QGroupBox(centralWidget);
groupBox->setObjectName(QString::fromUtf8("groupBox"));
groupBox->setGeometry(QRect(340, 210, 127, 101));
verticalLayout = new QVBoxLayout(groupBox);
verticalLayout->setSpacing(6);
verticalLayout->setContentsMargins(11, 11, 11, 11);
verticalLayout->setObjectName(QString::fromUtf8("verticalLayout"));
radioButton = new QRadioButton(groupBox);
radioButton->setObjectName(QString::fromUtf8("radioButton"));

verticalLayout->addWidget(radioButton);

radioButton_2 = new QRadioButton(groupBox);
radioButton_2->setObjectName(QString::fromUtf8("radioButton_2"));

verticalLayout->addWidget(radioButton_2);

radioButton_3 = new QRadioButton(groupBox);
radioButton_3->setObjectName(QString::fromUtf8("radioButton_3"));

verticalLayout->addWidget(radioButton_3);

This all looks good, I assume that 6 used or spacing is just a default along with the margins 11. I may have to experiment with the geometry 340, 210, 127, 101.

[JonB]

@SPlatten
Not sure what the question is here. Does "This all looks good" mean that when run it does indeed draw the radiobuttons correctly within their layout, as you have been trying to do in code but unsuccessfully?

You can see the code is exactly what I said and in the code example in the docs for QGroupBox. Create a QGroupBox, put a QVBoxLayout on it, add QRadioButtons onto the layout. That is all you should ever do.

The setGeometry() just corresponds to the position & size of the groupbox you have on your design canvas. I would not have thought you would need to do that, the QGroupBox should resize to correctly enclose its content. The spacing and margins are just defaults used by Designer, you can alter them.

You can play with this code in the ui_clsMainWnd.h file by editing, it will not get overwritten unless you alter the .ui file. And/or you can copy it to your own code and play with it there.

Whatever the difference from your own code which has not been working, you should be in a good position to discover that from here.

[SPlatten]

@JonB , sorry, yes, what I should have said, is that everything in my last post renders the correct solution and looks good, which I am now trying to replicate in my code, given that the XML is dynamic.

[JonB]

@SPlatten
Indeed, you must just make sure that what you come up from your parsing-creating-dynamically matches the static pattern you know works.

Everything has always felt like the radiobuttons are being added onto the QGroupBox directly where they need to be added onto the QVBoxLayout (and of course that must be set as the group box's layout).

[SPlatten]

@JonB , been out all day, just got back to trying out the stand along demo and no problems, it works:

#include "mainwindow.h"

#include <QApplication>
#include <QGroupBox>
#include <QRadioButton>
#include <QVBoxLayout>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    QApplication a(argc, argv);
    MainWindow w;

    QGroupBox* groupBox = new QGroupBox(w.centralWidget());
    groupBox->setTitle("Demo");
    groupBox->setObjectName(QString::fromUtf8("groupBox"));
    groupBox->setGeometry(QRect(20, 110, 127, 101));
    QVBoxLayout* verticalLayout = new QVBoxLayout(groupBox);
    verticalLayout->setSpacing(6);
    verticalLayout->setContentsMargins(11, 11, 11, 11);
    verticalLayout->setObjectName(QString::fromUtf8("verticalLayout"));
    QRadioButton* radioButton = new QRadioButton(groupBox);
    radioButton->setObjectName(QString::fromUtf8("radioButton"));
    radioButton->setText("Radio 1");
    verticalLayout->addWidget(radioButton);

    QRadioButton* radioButton_2 = new QRadioButton(groupBox);
    radioButton_2->setObjectName(QString::fromUtf8("radioButton_2"));
    radioButton_2->setText("Radio 2");
    verticalLayout->addWidget(radioButton_2);

    QRadioButton* radioButton_3 = new QRadioButton(groupBox);
    radioButton_3->setObjectName(QString::fromUtf8("radioButton_3"));
    radioButton_3->setText("Radio 3");
    verticalLayout->addWidget(radioButton_3);

    w.show();
    return a.exec();
}

Which means I need to did around in my engine and find out why the same doesn't work when I repeat in my engine.

Debugger, watch window:

[SGaist]

As suggested before, you should simplify your code and approach the interface building in a simpler manner.

For your xml, you should pass it through a validator to ensure that what you parse is what your application expects. With that you can remove quite a lot of manual verifications.

Split your widget generation in smaller functions. It's harder to reason in one mega function that does everything.

[SPlatten]

@SGaist , the engine is quite simple, I just need to identify what is different, I will start by comparing the tree structure.