Have troubles with QCommandLineParser

[tubbadu]

Hello! I'm having troubles trying to make QCommandLineParser work in my application:
for some reasons I don't understand, some arguments are simply ignored by the parser, and it always returns false at isSet. Here's the code:

QCommandLineParser parser;
	parser.setApplicationDescription("KToggle, a tool to toggle any app");
	parser.addHelpOption();
	parser.addVersionOption();
	QCommandLineOption classOption(QStringList() << "c" << "class",
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "Window class to toggle."),
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "class"));
	parser.addOption(classOption);

	QCommandLineOption nameOption(QStringList() << "n" << "name",
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "Window name to toggle. Substrings are also accepted."),
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "name"));
	parser.addOption(nameOption);

	QCommandLineOption programOption(QStringList() << "p" << "program",
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "Command to run program. May include optional flags."),
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "program"));
	parser.addOption(programOption);

	QCommandLineOption iconOption(QStringList() << "i" << "icon",
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "Tray icon to display. If unspecified, window's own icon will be displayed."),
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "icon"));
	parser.addOption(iconOption);

	QCommandLineOption xyOption(QStringList() << "xy",
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "x and y coordinates of the window."),
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "x,y"));
	xyOption.setDefaultValue("0,0");
	parser.addOption(xyOption);

	QCommandLineOption sizeOption(QStringList() << "size",
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "Size of the window."),
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "height,width"));
	sizeOption.setDefaultValue("500,700");
	parser.addOption(sizeOption);

	QCommandLineOption trayOption("no-tray",
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "Do not display tray icon."));
	parser.addOption(trayOption);

	QCommandLineOption cmdToRaiseOption("cmd-to-raise",
		QCoreApplication::translate("main", "Raise window running the command each time. Use this for apps like Telegram that hide the window when minimized."));
	parser.addOption(cmdToRaiseOption);

	parser.process(app);

then I'm trying to parse a json object to then send to QML:

QByteArray parserToJs(const QCommandLineParser &parser){
	QMap<QString, QString> map;

	map["class"] = "windowClass";
	map["name"] = "windowName";
	map["program"] = "program";
	map["icon"] = "icon";
	map["no-tray"] = "noTray";
	map["xy"] = "xy";
	map["size"] = "size";
	map["cmd-to-raise"] = "cmdToRaise";
	
	map["p"] = map["program"];
	map["n"] = map["name"];
	map["c"] = map["class"];
	map["i"] = map["icon"];


	QJsonObject parserJS;

	qWarning() << parser.isSet("icon");

	const QStringList options = map.keys(); //parser.optionNames();
	for (const QString& option : options) {
		if(parser.isSet(option)){
			parserJS[map[option]] = parser.value(option);
		} else {
			qWarning() << option << "not set";
		}
	}

	QJsonDocument docJS(parserJS);
	return docJS.toJson();
}

this is the help page, correctly showing all my arguments:

Options:
-h, --help               Displays help on commandline options.
--help-all               Displays help including Qt specific options.
-v, --version            Displays version information.
-c, --class <class>      Window class to toggle.
-n, --name <name>        Window name to toggle. Substrings are also accepted.
-p, --program <program>  Command to run program. May include optional flags.
-i, --icon <icon>        Tray icon to display. If unspecified, window's own
icon will be displayed.
--xy <x,y>               x and y coordinates of the window.
--size <height,width>    Size of the window.
--no-tray                Do not display tray icon.
--cmd-to-raise           Raise window running the command each time. Use this
for apps like Telegram that hide the window when
minimized.

but somehow, icon and name are not recognized:

$ ./build/bin/helloworld --class kate -p kate --icon plasma --xy 1,3 --size 800,500 --no-tray --name pippo

"cmd-to-raise" not set
"i" not set
"icon" not set
"n" not set
"name" not set

am I doing something wrong? Or is this a bug?
thanks in advance!

[JonB]

@tubbadu
I cannot spot what is wrong in your code. Do I dimly recall that Qt applications automatically/by default recognise a couple of command-line switches themselves and remove from command-line for future parsing? --name & --icon look a bit like UI options. Why don't you test your code against bool QCommandLineParser::parse(const QStringList &arguments) or void QCommandLineParser::process(const QStringList &arguments) instead? If that is different, then check out what the command-line arguments are actually being passed to QCommandLineParser::process(const QCoreApplication &app).

Otherwise start by stripping your code down to a minimum, e.g. only accepting --icon, and pass only --icon on command-line, get that working, build up from there.

[tubbadu]

@JonB you are right! running the app with --help-all lists all available Qt arguments, and icon and name are between them. Using different names fixed the problem, thank you very much!
I think however that QCommandLineParser should raise an error instead of displaying it in the available arguments and then ignoring it...

[JonB]

@tubbadu
There must/ought to be a way (putenv(SOME_ENV_VAR)?) of switching off Qt grabbing its own arguments? Which you might want here? Else Qt apps could never see generic arguments, maybe this is a QGuiApplication thing not QCoreApplication?