What exactly changed when QStandardItemModel itemChanged is signaled - user-interface

There is signal in QStandardItemModel which is emitted when data of an item is changed.
Usually we connect a handler for this signal and do all the work in the handler routine.
Such handle routine only gets pointer to the item.
Using this pointer it is possible to access the data of the item.
However, we do not know what exactly has changed... we only have updated value.
If item data has several roles I want to be able to get exactly which role (data) has been changed and what was the previous value.

In general, QStandardItemModel is for very simple data modeling. If you want to get into more advanced things like you desribe, you should look into subclassing QAbstractItemModel or one of it's abstract derivatives: Model/View classes
It may seem like a lot of work, but use the examples and refernce guides: Model/View programming, Model subclassing and the rewards will be great.

This is not possible with the standard signals of Qt. I suggest to add another signal for that.
For my own models, I usually use this approach: I have a root instance which contains pointers to all parts of my data model. Items in my model use this root instance to send signals like
itemChanged(item, attribute, oldValue, newValue)
for simple properties. The same goes for lists and the like; only here, I have several signals depending on the action, for example:
itemAdded(list, item, index)
[EDIT] The QT signal handling is very basic. Usually, it will only tell "something has changed". There is no support for "what exactly has changed?" since you don't need it most of the time. So if you need that information, you must do it yourself. You can't use a role alone, because roles must be backed by something in your item. What you can do is add change information to your items and read that when the role is requested. But this is not something that is supported "out of the box".

Related

How do i 'destroy all' a given Resource type in redux-saga?

I'm new to Redux-Saga, so please assume very shaky foundational knowledge.
In Redux, I am able to define an action and a subsequent reducer to handle that action. In my reducer, i can do just about whatever i want, such as 'delete all' of a specific state tree node, eg.
switch action.type
...
case 'DESTROY_ALL_ORDERS'
return {
...state,
orders: []
}
However, it seems to me (after reading the docs), that reducers are defined by Saga, and you have access to them in the form of certain given CRUD verb prefixes with invocation post fixes. E.g.
fetchStart, destroyStart
My instinct is to use destroyStart, but the method accepts a model instance, not a collection, i.e. it only can destroy a given resource instance (in my case, one Order).
TL;DR
Is there a destroyStart equivalent for a group of records at once?
If not, is there a way i can add custom behavior to the Saga created reducers?
What have a missed? Feel free to be as mean as you want, I have no idea what i'm doing but when you are done roasting me do me a favor and point me in the right direction.
EDIT:
To clarify, I'm not trying to delete records from my database. I only want to clear the Redux store of all 'Order' Records.
Two key bit's of knowledge were gained here.
My team is using a library called redux-api-resources which to some extent I was conflating with Saga. This library was created by a former employee, and adds about as much complexity as it removes. I would not recommend it. DestroyStart is provided by this library, and not specifically related to Saga. However the answer for anyone using this library (redux-api-resources) is no, there is no bulk destroy action.
Reducers are created by Saga, as pointed out in the above comments by #Chad S.. The mistake in my thinking was that I believed I should somehow crack open this reducer and fill it with complex logic. The 'Saga' way to do this is to put logic in your generator function, which is where you (can) define your control flow. I make no claim that this is best practice, only that this is how I managed to get my code working.
I know very little about Saga and Redux in general, so please take these answers with a grain of salt.

Philosophy Object/Properties Parameter Query

I'm looking at some code I've written and thinking "should I be passing that object into the method or just some of its properties?".
Let me explain:
This object has about 15 properties - user inputs. I then have about 10 methods that use upto 5 of these inputs. Now, the interface looks a lot cleaner, if each method has 1 parameter - the "user inputs object". But each method does not need all of these properties. I could just pass the properties that each method needs.
The fact I'm asking this question indicates I accept I may be doing things wrong.
Discuss......:)
EDIT: To add calrity:
From a web page a user enters details about their house and garden. Number of doors, number of rooms and other properties of this nature (15 in total).
These details are stored on a "HouseDetails" object as simple integer properties.
An instance of "HouseDetails" is passed into "HouseRequirementsCalculator". This class has 10 private methods like "calculate area of carpet", "caclulateExtensionPotential" etc.
For an example of my query, let's use "CalculateAreaOfCarpet" method.
should I pass the "HouseDetails" object
or should I pass "HouseDetails.MainRoomArea, HouseDetails.KitchenArea, HouseDetails.BathroomArea" etc
Based on my answer above and related to your edit:
a) You should pass the "HouseDetails"
object
Other thoughts:
Thinking more about your question and especially the added detail i'm left wondering why you would not just include those calculation methods as part of your HouseDetails object. After all, they are calculations that are specific to that object only. Why create an interface and another class to manage the calculations separately?
Older text:
Each method should and will know what part of the passed-in object it needs to reference to get its job done. You don't/shouldn't need to enforce this knowledge by creating fine-grained overloads in your interface. The passed-in object is your model and your contract.
Also, imagine how much code will be affected if you add and remove a property from this object. Keep it simple.
Passing individual properties - and different in each case - seems pretty messy. I'd rather pass whole objects.
Mind that you gave not enough insight into your situation. Perhaps try to describe the actual usage of this things? What is this object with 15 properties?, are those "10 methods that use upto 5 of these input" on the same object, or some other one?
After the question been edited
I should definitely go with passing the whole object and do the necessary calculations in the Calculator class.
On the other hand you may find Domain Driven Design an attractive alternative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design). With regard to that principles you could add methods from calculator to the HouseDetails class. Domain Driven Design is quite nice style of writing apps, just depends how clean this way is for you.

Make the PhoneApplicationService.Current.State Dictionary Observable?

In a Windows Phone 7 app, the PhoneApplicationService.Current.State object is declared as an IDictionary, and is implemented as a Dictionary. I was really hoping to get notified when any state changes occur. (I realise I could build my own state collection somewhere else and do whatever I want, but I'm retrofitting this into existing code.)
Is there any way to get that State object set to an ObservableDictionary instead of a Dictionary, so I can attach to it and get notified when the collection changes?
I'm guessing the answer will be 'no' but just want to check I haven't missed something :)
Thanks,
John
You can't change the existing implementation, but you could create a wrapper class which implements IObservable but uses PhoneApplicationService.Current.State internally.
This way, you wouldn't have to build a complete state persistence soution yourself and could implement the ObservableDictionary as best meets your needs.

Java design: too many getters

After writing a few lesser programs when learning Java the way I've designed the programs is with Model-View-Control. With using MVC I have a plethora of getter methods in the model for the view to use.
It feels that while I gain on using MVC, for every new value added I have to add two new methods in the model which quickly get all cluttered with getter & setters.
So I was thinking, maybe I should use the notifyObserver method that takes an argument. But wouldn't feel very smart to send every value by itself either so I figured, maybe if I send a kind of container with all the values, preferably only those that actually changed.
What this would accomplish would be that instead of having a whole lot of getter methods I could just have one method in the model which put all relevant values in the container.
Then in the view I would have a method called from the update which extracted the values from the container and assigning them to the correct fields.
I have two questions concerning this.
First: is this actually a viable way to do this. Would you recommend me doing something along these lines?
Secondly: if I do use this plan and I don't want to keep sending fields that didn't actually change. How would I handle that without having to have if statements to check if the value is not null for every single value?
I've more familiar with the MVP paradigm, but hopefully they're similar enough to comment. While getters (and setters) in and of themselves are not necessarily evil, they are sometimes a sign that your subsystems are too strongly coupled. One really great way to decouple this is to use an event bus: see Best practices for architecting GWT apps. This allows the view to just shoot off events for the controller to listen for whenever something important happens, and the view can listen for events whenever something changes in the model that corresponds to updating the view. Ideally you wouldn't even need to ever pass the model to the view, if you can break up any changes into incremental pieces and just tell the view to change this part and then this other part.
If you feel you have too many getters (and setters) in your model class, maybe you have too many fields altogether. Is it possible that there are several distinct classes hiding within your model? If you extract these into separate classes, it may make your model more manageable.
OTOH the associated container you are thinking about could also be viable - but then why duplicate all data? You could instead use the associated container directly in the model to store all properties you can think of. And you can also pass this around for observers to get updates (preferably wrapped into an unmodifiable container, of course) - although in this setup you wouldn't need to.
In general, Java is a verbose language which expects you to put all those getters and setters (and a lot more) in place. However, any decent IDE can generate those for you with a few keypresses. Note also that you need to write them only once, and you will read and call them many many more times. Verbose also means easily readable.
If you have too many getter it's ok. But you shouldn't need the setter. The view is supposed to only read/query the model.
The MVC pattern should promote something that is asymmetric: the control update the model by calling methods in the model that embed the logic and update the sate accordingly; this respects encapsulation. The view reads/queries the model via the getters. This goes a bit against information hiding, but that's how MVC works.
I wouldn't personally pass all information in the events. It sounds complicated to me: either you end up with something that is not statically typed (e.g. you pass hashmaps), or with a plethora of typed events. I would stick with something simple, and have (possibly many) getter in the model.

How do I get a selection model to work with a proxy model?

I have a model and two views set up like this:
Model ---> OSortFilterProxyModel ---> OListView
Model ------------------------------> OTableView
When the user selects something in one of the views, I want the other view to mirror that selection. So I thought I'd use a QSelectionModel to link them together. But this does not work. I have a feeling it is because the views think they have two different models, when in fact they have the same model. Is there a way to get this to work?
What is probably happening is that the views do have two different models. One is your original model, the other is the sort filter model.
I'm not sure if this would work, and it depends on what Qt considers "activated", but you could connect a function to each of the view's activated slots. These will pass you a model index. You'll have to send the model index through the proxy model in the appropriate direction (mapFromSource and mapToSource). Then, call the setCurrentIndex on the other view.
The documentation for the activated signal states that what is considered "activated" varies by platform. There might be other signals you could latch onto, such as the selection model's selection changed signal. You might have to do a different call to change the selection as seen by the user. And finally, it might be possible or even easier to do in a derived QSelectionModel, as long as you remember about mapping to/from the source model.
Not quite sure how your model subclass is implemented - but the selection depends on persistent model indexes being correct. Can you provide some source code? Are you using the same selection model on both?
You propably need to use void QItemSelectionModel::select combined with QAbstractProxyModel::mapSelectionFromSource and QAbstractProxyModel::mapSelectionToSource. In QListView's selectionChange signal handler you should have
tableView->selection()->select(
proxyModel->mapSelectionToSource(selected),
QItemSelectionModel::ClearAndSelect);
and analogically with mapSelectionFromSource in QTableView's signalChange signal handler.
Note that i am not sure if Qt will prevent infinite recursion when table will change selection of list which in turn will change selection of table and so on...

Resources