- Qt 5.3
- Qt QML
- Chapter 4: Using Custom Property Types
- Qt 5.3.2 Reference Documentation

# Chapter 4: Using Custom Property Types

The `PieChart` type currently has a string-type property and a color-type property. It could have many other types of properties. For example, it could have an int-type property to store an identifier for each chart:

    // C++
    class PieChart : public QQuickPaintedItem
    {
        Q_PROPERTY(int chartId READ chartId WRITE setChartId NOTIFY chartIdChanged)
        ...

    public:
        void setChartId(int chartId);
        int chartId() const;
        ...

    signals:
        void chartIdChanged();
    };

    // QML
    PieChart {
        ...
        chartId: 100
    }

Aside from `int`, we could use various other property types. Many of the Qt data types such as QColor, QSize and QRect are automatically supported from QML. (See Data Type Conversion Between QML and C++ documentation for a full list.)

If we want to create a property whose type is not supported by QML by default, we need to register the type with the QML engine.

For example, let's replace the use of the `property` with a type called "PieSlice" that has a `color` property. Instead of assigning a color, we assign an `PieSlice` value which itself contains a `color`:

    import Charts 1.0
    import QtQuick 2.0

    Item {
        width: 300; height: 200

        PieChart {
            id: chart
            anchors.centerIn: parent
            width: 100; height: 100

            pieSlice: PieSlice {
                anchors.fill: parent
                color: "red"
            }
        }

        Component.onCompleted: console.log("The pie is colored " + chart.pieSlice.color)
    }

Like `PieChart`, this new `PieSlice` type inherits from QQuickPaintedItem and declares its properties with Q_PROPERTY():

    class PieSlice : public QQuickPaintedItem
    {
        Q_OBJECT
        Q_PROPERTY(QColor color READ color WRITE setColor)

    public:
        PieSlice(QQuickItem *parent = 0);

        QColor color() const;
        void setColor(const QColor &color);

        void paint(QPainter *painter);

    private:
        QColor m_color;
    };

To use it in `PieChart`, we modify the `color` property declaration and associated method signatures:

    class PieChart : public QQuickItem
    {
        Q_OBJECT
        Q_PROPERTY(PieSlice* pieSlice READ pieSlice WRITE setPieSlice)
        ...
    public:
        ...
        PieSlice *pieSlice() const;
        void setPieSlice(PieSlice *pieSlice);
        ...
    };

There is one thing to be aware of when implementing `setPieSlice()`. The `PieSlice` is a visual item, so it must be set as a child of the `PieChart` using QQuickItem::setParentItem() so that the `PieChart` knows to paint this child item when its contents are drawn:

    void PieChart::setPieSlice(PieSlice *pieSlice)
    {
        m_pieSlice = pieSlice;
        pieSlice->setParentItem(this);
    }

Like the `PieChart` type, the `PieSlice` type has to be registered using qmlRegisterType() to be used from QML. As with `PieChart`, we'll add the type to the "Charts" type namespace, version 1.0:

    int main(int argc, char *argv[])
    {
        ...
        qmlRegisterType<PieSlice>("Charts", 1, 0, "PieSlice");
        ...
    }

Try it out with the code in Qt's `examples/qml/tutorials/extending/chapter4-customPropertyTypes` directory.

Files:

- tutorials/extending/chapter4-customPropertyTypes/app.qml
- tutorials/extending/chapter4-customPropertyTypes/piechart.cpp
- tutorials/extending/chapter4-customPropertyTypes/piechart.h
- tutorials/extending/chapter4-customPropertyTypes/pieslice.cpp
- tutorials/extending/chapter4-customPropertyTypes/pieslice.h
- tutorials/extending/chapter4-customPropertyTypes/main.cpp
- tutorials/extending/chapter4-customPropertyTypes/chapter4-customPropertyTypes.pro
- tutorials/extending/chapter4-customPropertyTypes/chapter4-customPropertyTypes.qrc