Qt API bindings generator for Node.js

Summary

• Qt API exposed in js
• Node.js integrated and runs in a single event loop

How to build

Requirements

• git
• subversion (for V8 make dependencies)
• C++11 supporting compiler, tested with gcc 4.7.2, 4.7.3, clang 3.4
• cmake (for building cpgf library)
• make (some automation in qmake build files invokes it)
• Qt5.3.1
• OpenGL development files
• libffi development files
• Boost (required for tests) - tested with 1.52

Building

# download source
git clone https://github.com/svalaskevicius/qtjs-generator.git
cd qtjs-generator/
git submodule update --init --recursive

# build it!
mkdir -p build
cd build
<path to Qt>/bin/qmake ../ -recursive
make -j4
# (this will take a while)

Updating Qt bindings

Requirements

• doxygen
• JDK (for building the metadata generator)
• bash & perl (for preprocessing etc)
• Qt package with header for Linux

As Qt has different headers directory structure for different target platforms, you'll need to use the packages that are available to download for the Linux platform. The structure in those packages is the simplest and thus enabled to create the header scanner easily - if this causes many problems, we can change this to support the source packages instead.

Steps

# build metagen tool 
pushd lib/cpgf/tools/metagen

    # **download rhino from https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Rhino/Download_Rhino and put js.jar here**
    wget https://github.com/downloads/mozilla/rhino/rhino1_7R4.zip
    unzip -j rhino1_7R4.zip '*/js.jar'

cd tool
bash compile.sh
popd

# generate binding code
pushd metagen
bash generate_bindings.sh <path to Qt includes>
popd

Getting started

While there is no install script yet, the built qtjs runner can be launched using the wrapper scripts in the tools directory.

    cd tools
    ./qtjs

You'll see the nodejs prompt. Try typing "qt" - the screen should be filled with the Qt classes available for usage.

Try the following:

    var a = new qt.QMessageBox()
    a.setText(new qt.QString("Hello World!"))
    a.show()

Or check the prepared examples:

    cd examples/
    ../tools/qtjs widgets.js

qtjs can by symlinked to a directory in $PATH and it will be available throughout the system. Also, it can act as the node or nodejs launcher with the compatible npm symlinked in the same tools directory - all node packages can be used together with the Qt bindings.

License

Eclipse Public License (EPL) http://www.eclipse.org/org/documents/epl-v10.php