Node-Qt (WIP)

Node-Qt provides native bindings to the Qt library as a Node.js addon. The focus is on GUI bindings; there is no need to duplicate the functionality of the Node API and its modules.

We try to follow Qt's API as closely as possible, but there is some changes due to differences between nodejs and c++ and sometimes quirks are inevitable (for example, virtual methods that handle events are translated into callback setters). See the header files in src/ for a list of available bindings, and comments in .cc files for possible API differences.

Supported platforms: Mac OS X | Windows | Linux

Hello world

Ever wanted to create native apps directly from Node?

var qt = require('..'),
    app = new qt.QApplication;

// Prevent objects from being GC'd
global.app = app;

var hello = new qt.QPushButton('Hello World', function() {
    console.log('hi');
});
hello.setGeometry(200,200,200,200);
hello.show();

// Start application
app.exec();

Getting started

From your project directory, run (see below for requirements):

$ npm install node-qt

Alternatively, to use the latest development version from Github:

$ npm install git://github.com/dubcanada/node-qt.git

This will download and build Node-Qt in node_modules/. Then create a new file, say helloworld.js, copy the example above and run Node as usual:

$ node helloworld

See the examples/ directory for other simple use cases.

Status

Modules	Completed	Total
QtCore	1	213
QtGUI	0	207
QtMultimedia	0	82
QtWidgets	2	202

Build requirements

Node-Qt was designed to build seamlessly with minimal dependencies on most platforms. The necessary platform-dependent Qt binaries are bundled with the module (due to heterogeneous dependencies, Linux is an exception).

For all platforms: Node >= 0.10.29

• Mac: Python, Make, and GCC.
• Windows: Python and MSVC++ (either free or commercial).
• Linux: Python, Make, GCC, pkg-config, and Qt 5.3+.

Contributing

Building and testing

To download and build the development version:

$ git clone git://github.com/dubcanada/node-qt.git
$ cd node-qt
$ npm install

Binding new classes & methods

Run node tools/gen.js for list of options.

Manually binding new classes & methods

Binding to new classes

1. Create your files (e.g. qclass.h, qclass.cc) from the provided templates src/template.h, src/template.cc
2. qclass.*: search and replace all occurrences of __Template__, __TEMPLATE__, and __template__ with the corresponding class name
3. node-qt.gyp: Add qclass.cc to sources list
4. qt.cc: Include qclass.h
5. qt.cc: Add QClass::Initialize() to Initialize()

Binding to new methods

1. qclass.h: Declare static method as per Example() method in template.h
2. qclass.cc: Implement method as per Example() in template.cc
3. qclass.cc: Expose method to JavaScript via tpl->PrototypeTemplate() call in Initialize(). Again see template.cc.

Add lines too binding.gyp and qt.cc (see each file for examples).