1. Qt Everywhere: a C++
abstraction platform
Gianni Valdambrini (aleister@develer.com)

2. C++ and portability issues
 Is C++ portable? Yes, theoretically...
 Standard library is too tiny:
 No filesystem access
 No network
 No multiprocessing/multithreading
 No serious unicode support
 ... and it's not going to change in C++0x!
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3. C++ and portability issues
 Real-world C++ programmers have to use libraries for
everything
 Some libraries are good, some are bad
 Some are portable, some are not
 Some become unmaintained after a while
 ... big mess!
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4. C++ and portability issues
 Windows programmers use Win32 API
 But Microsoft only improves .NET framework!
 Naked Win32 API is a pain to use!
 Linux programmers use POSIX
 POSIX is mostly C-oriented
 It's totally useless for Windows
 Mac C++ programmers are doomed
 Either POSIX or Carbon...
 Cocoa is for Objective-C only!
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5. Qt to the rescue!
 Qt is not only a GUI toolkit: it's also a complete
portability layer!
 Even for command line applications
 Lots of carefully designed and very mature classes for
everyday C++ programming
 Prefer quick everyday usability over “abstract
perfection”
 Fast to learn, fast to use, compact code
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6. Qt Portability Layer
 QtCore
 Data structures, rich types, system information,
reactor (event loop), multi-threading
 QtNetwork
 Sockets, IP, TCP, UDP, HTTP, FTP, SSL
 QtXml
 Full DOM implementation
 SAX2 parser
 QtWebKit
 Web browser engine, used by Safari/Chrome
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7. QtCore: quick overview
 QtCore is very “wide” but not “deep”
 Many simple classes
 But lots of them!
 Exploring all it would require a full training on its own!
 We will just see some random examples, that will
show the typical design of QtCore classes
 Easy to use, and very powerful
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8. QtCore: Implicit sharing
 Many Qt classes use “implicit sharing”
 Each instance is actually a pointer to shared data, with
a reference counter
 Net result: fast pass-by-value, easier code, less
performance bugs.
 Fully multithreaded safe
 No mutex/locks, use CPU-specific atomic
increments/decrements.
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9. QtCore: Implicit sharing
 Returning by value offer more readable API:
 QList<QObject> c = obj->children();
 Chainability: obj->children().count();
 Can also nest containers with no overhead
 With STL containers, it would have been:
 list<QObject> c; obj->children(c);
 Using an argument as return value is bad for
readability!
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10. Text processing
 Qt offers many good primitives for text processing.
 QFile: line-by-line processing
 QRegExp: Perl regular expressions (many methods
accept it, even findChildren()!)
 QString: many powerful methods (inspired by Perl)
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11. QtCore: strings (1/3)
 QString: unicode strings representation
 Implicit sharing policy: pass by value!
 Well-suited for text, don't use for binary data
 QByteArray is better for 8-bit binary data
 Contains loads of functionality for any kind of text
processing
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12. QtCore: strings (2/3)
 Basic: constructor, resize(), [] / .at(), .size(), .resize(),
.fill()
 Modification: .append(), .prepend(), .insert(), .replace()
(RX), .remove() (RX)
 Whitespaces: .trimmed(), simplified()
 Grouping: .split() (RX), .join()
 Searching: .indexOf(), .lastIndexOf(), .find() (RX), .
{starts|ends}With(), .contains() (RX), .count() (RX)
 Comparison: <, <=, ==, >=, >,
::localeAwareCompare()
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13. QtCore: strings (3/3)
 Conversion to: .toUpper(), .toLower(), toInt(),
.toDouble(), .toAscii(), .toLatin1(), .toUtf8(),
.toLocal8Bit(), toUcs4()
 Conversion from: like above, ::number(n,base)
 Formatting: .sprintf() (bad), .arg() (good)
 Use %number formatting instead of %type (like
printf)
 Fully type-safe
 More translator-friendly (can safely-reorder)
 ... and much more!
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14. QtCore: date/time support
(1/3)
 QDate: one instance is one specific calendar day
 Formatting: .{to|from}String() (ISO or locale)
 Weeks: .weekNumber(), .dayOfWeek()
 Jumping: .addDays/Months/Years()
 Texts: ::{long|short}{Day|Month}Name()
 Validation: ::isLeapYear(), ::isValid()
 Ordering: <, <=, ==, >=, >, .daysTo()
 Factory: ::currentDate()
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15. QtCore: date/time support
(2/3)
 QTime: one instance is one specific time (instant)
 Formatting: .{to|from}String() (ISO or locale)
 Jumping: .addSecs(), .addMSecs()
 Validation: ::isValid()
 Measuring: .start(), .restart(), .elapsed()
 Ordering: <, <=, >=, >, .secsTo(), .msecsTo()
 Factory: ::currentTime()
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16. QtCore: date/time support
(3/3)
 QDateTime: an instance is one specific calendar time at
a specific time (instant)
 Combination of the previous two, merging all the
functionalities!
 Time formats: Localtime/UTC
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17. STL containers
 STL containers are good because:
 They are standard C++
 They are ready-to-use and very efficient
 The generic iterator concept is powerful
 STL containers are bad because:
 They are verbose to use (eg: iterating)
 They are incomplete
 Hash table anyone?
 They bloat the executable code due to template
expansion
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18. Qt Containers
 Designed “the Qt way”
 Easy to use, no complex stuff
 Implicitly shared
 You can pass by value without impacting
performance (more readable code!)
 Minimal inline expansion
 Generate light executables for embedded code
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19. Qt Containers
 QList<>, QLinkedList<>, QVector<>
 QList<> is an array of pointers
 Random access
 Best for most purpose (very fast operations)
 QLinkedList<> is a true linked list of pointers
 O(1) insertion in the middle, no random access
 QVector<> is an array of objects
 Occupy contiguous space in memory
 Slow insertions, but cache friendly
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20. Qt Containers
 QVector<> is an array of objects
 Occupy contiguous space in memory
 Slow insertions, but cache friendly
 QList<> is an array of pointers
 Random access
 Best for most purpose (very fast operations)
 QSet<>
 Fast set of objects (no repetition)
 Implemented through hash-table (much faster
than std::set!) → not ordered 20

21. Qt Containers
 QHash<>, QMap<>
 Associative arrays (map values to keys)
 QHash<> relies on qHash() and operator==(), QMap
on operator<()
 Hashtables are O(1) for lookups, maps are O(logn)
 Iteration: hashtables have random order, maps have
fixed order
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22. Qt / XML parsers
Stream based DOM
 QXmlReader  QtDom*
 SAX2  W3C
 QXmlStreamReader
 Qt specific

23. QXmlReader
 SAX2 only http://www.saxproject.org
 not validating, namespace support
 SAX2 parsing is callback based
 for each sax-event a different function is called
 the parser has no state

24. QDom*
 in memory representation of the XML document
 follow the W3C recommendations
 useful to manipulate the XML document
 not validating, namespace support

25. QtNetwork
 Qt module to make networking programs
 QtGui not required
 high-level classes
 for http/ftp clients
 low-level classes
 direct access to the underling socket
 event driven (= high performance)
 SSL support

26. QtNetwork
high level classes low level classes
 QNetworkAccessManager  QTcpServer
 QFtp  QTcpSocket
 QUdpServer
 QUdpSocket
 QSsl*

27. QtNetwork
 QMetworkAccessManager
 event driven → the event loop must be running
 QNetworkRequest
 full support for setting http headers
 QNetworkReply
 access to the reply headers
 signals to track the downloading process

28. QtNetwork
 QNetworkDiskCache
 simple, disk based, cache
 QAbstractNetworkCache for a custom cache
 QnetworkProxy
 route network connections through a proxy
 SOCK5, HTTP, HTTP Caching, FTP Caching
 transparent to the networking code
 application wide / per socket
 anonymous or username/password

29. Any Questions?
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