About

Easily manage the settings in your QGIS plugin.

This module can:

• manage different types of settings (bool, string, color, integer, double, stringlist)
• read and write settings in QGIS application or in the QGIS project
• automatically set widgets from corresponding setting
• automatically write settings from widgets of a dialog

The main setting class

All your settings will be saved in a single class, which will subclass SettingManager.

from qgissettingmanager import *

class MySettings(SettingManager):
    def __init__(self):
        SettingManager.__init__(self, myPluginName)
        self.addSetting("myVariable", "bool", "global", True)

You add as many settings as you want using addSetting method:

addSetting(name, settingType, scope, defaultValue, options={})

• name: the name of the setting
• settingType: bool, string, color, integer, double or stringlist
• scope: global or project
• defaultValue: the default value of the setting (type must corrsepond)
• options: a dictionary of options for widgets (see possible widgets)

Access the settings

Instantiate your settings class in your current class:

import MySettings
self.settings = MySettings()

The settings are easily accessed using the value and setValue methods:

myVariable = self.settings.value("myVariable")
self.settings.setValue("myVariable", False)

Match settings with widgets of a dialog

Quick start

You can associate a setting to a defined widget in a dialog (or a dockable window). The first point is to name the widget as the setting name. Then, your dialog class subclasses the SettingDialog class:

class MyDialog(QDialog, Ui_myDialog, SettingDialog):
    def __init__(self):
        QDialog.__init__(self)
        self.setupUi(self)
        self.settings = MySettings()
        SettingDialog.__init__(self, self.settings)

Hence, must dialog is shown, all widgets which are named as some setting will be set to the corresponding value. On dialog acceptance, the setting will be set according to their widget.

To control which setting has been associated to a widget, you can write print self.widgetList().

Settings' update behavior

You can have a different behavior using SettingDialog parameters:

SettingDialog(settingManager, setValuesOnDialogAccepted=True, setValueOnWidgetUpdate=False)

• setValuesOnDialogAccepted: if True, settings values are set when dialog is accepted;
• setValueOnWidgetUpdate: if True, settings are set as soon as the widgets is modified.

Check something before updating the settings

You can override the SettingDialog.onBeforeAcceptDialog() method to check your settings. Settings will be saved only if method returns True.

Using showEvent

Be warned that SettingDialog implements showEvent method. Therefore, if you redefine it in your dialog class, you have to write:

def showEvent(self, e):
    settingDialog.showEvent(self, e)
    # do your own stuff

### Possible widgets

The widgets are automatically detected by the manager. If the type of widget is not handled, an error is raised.

Strings

• QLineEdit
• QComboBox (setting can be defined as the current item text or data: specify option comboMode as data (default) or text)
• QButtonGroup (the setting is set as the checked widget text in the button group)

Booleans

• QCheckBox
• Any checkable widget (groupbox, etc.)

Colors

• Any widget but labels or pushbuttons are recommended (it uses QGIS color button). Use option dialogTitle to set the dialog title.

Integers

• QLineEdit
• QSpinBox
• QSlider
• QComboBox (setting is set as the combo box index)

Doubles

• QLineEdit
• QDoubleSpinBox

Stringlist

• QListWidget (checks items having their text in the list)
• QButtonGroup (checks items having their name in the list)

New types of widget are easily added, if one is missing, do not hesitate to ask!

Using git submodules

To use this module, you can easily copy the files and put them in your project. A more elegant way is to use git submodule. Hence, you can keep up with latest improvements. In you plugin directory, do

git submodule add git://github.com/3nids/qgissettingmanager.git

A folder qgissettingmanager will be added to your plugin directory. However, git only references the module, and you can git pull in this folder to get the last changes.