Velvet Star Monitor

Standout celebrity highlights with iconic style.

updates

Qt/QML : Send QImage From C++ to QML and Display The QImage On GUI

Writer Matthew Barrera

I created a class Publisher which periodically emits a QImage object.

However I'm having a tough time drawing the QImage to a QML element. It appears that the Image and Canvas QML components require a QUrl instead of a QImage, but I'm not sure how to convert my QImage to a QUrl. Edit4: When I say QUrl, I don't mean I'm trying to convert an image to a URL. That's nonsense. I mean I want to generate a reference to this image, which is not on disk, and the data type that QML components are asking for is a URL.

I've done some research and found that QQuickImageProvider provides a solution, but I haven't found any documentation explaining how to convert my QImage signal to a QUrl that I can use for drawing. Any example code or reference documentation would be appreciated.

Thanks for your help!

Edit1:

I've taken a look here: and I do not see how I pass a QImage to the quick image provider and from it create a QUrl.

Edit2. Here is the header. The implementation should not be important.

class Publisher
{ Q_OBJECT
public: Publisher(QObject* parent = 0); virtual ~Publisher(void);
Q_SIGNALS: void newImage(const QImage& newImage);
};

Edit 3. Here is my QML code, but I don't know how to draw my QImage, so this code is kind of meaningless.

my main.cpp file:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{ QGuiApplication app(argc, argv); qmlRegisterType<Publisher>("Components", 1, 0, "Publisher"); QtQuick2ApplicationViewer viewer; viewer.setMainQmlFile(QStringLiteral("qml/QQuickViewExample/main.qml")); viewer.showExpanded(); return app.exec();
}

my main.qml file:

import QtQuick 2.0
import Components 1.0
Rectangle { id : testRect width: 360 height: 360 Image{ anchors.fill: parent id: myImage Publisher { id: myPub onNewImage: { myImage.source = newImage; #I know this doesnt work, it needs a QUrl and not a QImage } } }
}
18

4 Answers

In other words, you have a class emitting a signal carrying a QImage and want to update an item in QML with that image? There are various solutions, none of which involves "converting a QImage to a QUrl" (whatever that means, surely you don't need to get a data URL carrying your image data...)

Use an image provider

This means you can use a plain Image item in your QML files.

  1. Create a QQuickImageProvider subclass; give it a QImage member (the image to provider), override requestImage to provide that image (the actual id requested does not really matter, see below), and a slot that receives a QImage and updates the member.
  2. Connect your Publisher signal to your provider's slot
  3. Install the provider into the QML engine via QQmlEngine::addImageProvider (see QQuickView::engine); again the id does not really matter, just use a sensible one
  4. In QML, just use a plain Image element with a source like this

    Image { id: myImage source: "image://providerIdPassedToAddImageProvider/foobar"
    }

    foobar will be passed to your provider, but again, it doesn't really matter.

  5. We're almost there, we now only need a way to push the image updates to the QML world (otherwise Image will never know when to update itself). See my answer here for how to do that with a Connections element and a bit of JS.

    Note that in general you don't need to make Publisher a QML type, you just need to create one instance in C++ and expose it to the QML world via QQmlContext::setContextProperty.

Use a custom Qt Quick 2 Item

QQuickPaintedItem is probably the most convenient for the job as it offers a paint method taking a QPainter. Hence the big plan is

  1. Subclass QQuickPaintedItem: the subclass stores the QImage to be painted and has a slot that sets the new QImage. Also its paint implementation simply paints the image using QPainter::drawImage.
  2. Expose the subclass to the QML world via qmlRegisterType (so that you can use it in QML)
  3. Figure out a way to connect the signal carrying the new image to the items' slot.

    This might be the tricky part.

    To perform the connection in C++ you need a way to figure out that the item has been created (and get a pointer to it); usually one does this by means of assigning the objectName property to some value, then using findChild on the root object (as returned by QQuickView::rootObject()) to get a pointer to the item itself. Then you can use connect as usual.

    Or, could instead perform the connection in QML, just like above, via a Connections element on the publisher C++ object exposed to the QML world:

    MyItem { id: myItem
    }
    Connections { target: thePublisherObjectExposedFromC++ onNewImage: myItem.setImage(image)
    }

    This has the advantage of working no matter when you create the MyItem instance; but I'm not 100% sure it will work because I'm not sure you can handle the QImage type in QML.

2

When I've had image-producing C++ classes I've wanted to embed in QML, I've always done it by making the C++ class a subclass of QDeclarativeItem (there'll be a new QtQuick 2.0 equivalent of course), overriding the paint method with the appropriate drawing code, which maybe as simple as

void MyItem::paint(QPainter* painter,const QStyleOptionGraphicsItem*,QWidget*) { painter->drawImage(QPointF(0.0f,0.0f),_image);
}

if you have a QImage of the right size already... and Job Done. For animation, just ping update() when there's something new to draw.

2
QString getImage()
{
QByteArray byteArray;
QBuffer buffer(&byteArray);
buffer.open(QIODevice::WriteOnly);
img.save(&buffer,"JPEG"); //save image data in string
QString image("data:image/jpg;base64,");
image.append(QString::fromLatin1(byteArray.toBase64().data()));
return image;
}

send image string directly to qml source

2

Use QQuickItem. There is a Qt example that does this.

C:\Qt\Examples\Qt-5.14.1\quick\scenegraph\threadedanimation

You make a class derived from QQuickItem and register it with qmlRegisterType. Provide the override function 'updatePaintNode' in your class. In the example, the class is 'Spinner'

In updatePaintNode:

Create a node class derived from QObject and QSGTransformNode

In the node class constructor:

Convert your Qimage to an QSGTexture with createTextureFromImage.

Create QSGSimpleTextureNode, set QSGTexture using setTexture

appendChildNode with QSGSimpleTextureNode

In QML add

import Spinner 1.0

and

Spinner { anchors.centerIn: parent anchors.horizontalCenterOffset: 80 spinning: true
}

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Sign up using Google Sign up using Facebook Sign up using Email and Password

Post as a guest

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy