Live observation of state machines in a Qt application

[Christopher]

Hello everybody,

I'm trying to extract all the state machines of my application which are defined as DSM in QML.
For documentation purposes I want to visualize the state machines and active states while the application is running (maybe with Graphviz like Gamma Ray does it).

My first attempt was to install a eventFilter into my QGuiApplication and listen to all QChildEvents to recognize states added to a statemachine. Then I would build the state machines on my own and visualize them.

bool FilterObject::eventFilter(QObject *object, QEvent *event)
{
    if (event->type() == QEvent::ChildAdded) {
        QChildEvent *childAddedEvent = static_cast<QChildEvent*>(event);

        childAddedEvent->child()->installEventFilter(new FilterObject());

        qDebug() << "added" << childAddedEvent->child()->metaObject()->className() << "to" << object->metaObject()->className();
   
    }
}

Unfortunately I get mostly.

• added QObject to ...
• added QObject to ...
• added QObject to ...

So I can't really determine the if a QState is added to the state machine.

Inherit QStatemachine, QState, ... and implement everything I need to access the state machines from outside could be an alternative way, but maybe there is an easier method.

Do have any idea how I can observe my state machines without an external tool and maybe without the knowledge about the state machines.

[SGaist]

Hi and welcome to devnet,

Are you sure a tool like KDAB's Gamma Ray is out of question for your job ?

[Christopher]

Hi,

Yes, GammaRay might solve the problem, but I want to automate the process as much as possible.
Example: I press a button in my application -> a screenshot of the application and all state machines are saved.

With GammaRay I have to save the images of the state machines by hand (not .scxml or at least .dot)

[SGaist]

Then you should either check the code where they do that and integrated it to your project or add the image saving feature to GammaRay