Keeping Shortcuts active in the MainWindow when on a modeless QDialog

[Sergex]

Hi,

I have an action with a keyboard shortcut in my main window that starts an operation called "process". But now I made a QDialog that pops up when a button is pressed, and in that dialog I set the value that the process operation in the main window needs. So for this I made the dialog modeless but while I'm on the dialog the keyboard shortcuts of the mainwindow don't work until I actually click on the mainwindow again. Since I vary the parameter in the QDialog I would like to not need to always click on the mainwindow after setting a value in the dialog to start a "process".

I tried doing:

//In main window
 
...
processAction = new QAction(this)
processAction->setShortcut(QKeySequence(Qt::Key_3));
...
 
myDialog = new QDialog(this)
myDialog->addAction(processAction);

//In main window

...
processAction = new QAction(this)
processAction->setShortcut(QKeySequence(Qt::Key_3));
...

myDialog = new QDialog(this)
myDialog->addAction(processAction);

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But this didn't work.
Is there a way to do this??

Thanks.

[Spitfire]

Event Filter to the rescue!
Install it on the dialog with main window as a filtering object and you're good to go.

[Sergex]

Thanks for the reply!

Yes this almost works, almost because I'm having a strange problem happening. I installed the eventFilter on the dialog like this:

//In my MainWindow
 
myDialog->installEventFilter(this);
...
 
...
bool eventFilter(QObject *obj, QEvent *e)
    {
        if(obj == myDialog)
        {
            if(e->type() == QEvent::KeyPress)
            {
                QKeyEvent* keyEvent = static_cast<QKeyEvent*>(e);
                if(keyEvent->key() == Qt::Key_3)
                {
                    process();
                    return true;
                }
                else
                    return false;
            }
        }
 
        return QMainWindow::eventFilter(obj, e);
    }

//In my MainWindow

myDialog->installEventFilter(this);
...

...
bool eventFilter(QObject *obj, QEvent *e)
    {
        if(obj == myDialog)
        {
            if(e->type() == QEvent::KeyPress)
            {
                QKeyEvent* keyEvent = static_cast<QKeyEvent*>(e);
                if(keyEvent->key() == Qt::Key_3)
                {
                    process();
                    return true;
                }
                else
                    return false;
            }
        }

        return QMainWindow::eventFilter(obj, e);
    }

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This will only work if I set the 'if' line :
if(keyEvent->key() == Qt::Key_Shift)
..

In other words it will only go into the if(e->type() == QEvent::KeyPress), only if with the SHIFT, Control or Alt keys are presssed but not with any other keys. And since I don't want any of the modifier keys as shortcut to my function I am still stuck.

I am on Mac OS 10.6.8 if that makes any difference..

Any ideas??

[Spitfire]

I don't have mac at hand to check, but I would guess this shouldn't make any difference.

bool MainWindow::eventFilter( QObject* o, QEvent* e )
{
    if( e->type() == QEvent::KeyPress )
    {
        QKeyEvent* keyEvent = static_cast<QKeyEvent*>( e );
        qDebug() << keyEvent->key();
    }
    return QMainWindow::eventFilter( o, e );
}

bool MainWindow::eventFilter( QObject* o, QEvent* e )
{
    if( e->type() == QEvent::KeyPress )
    {
        QKeyEvent* keyEvent = static_cast<QKeyEvent*>( e );
        qDebug() << keyEvent->key();
    }
    return QMainWindow::eventFilter( o, e );
}

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should work for any key as long as the window has the focus (it works in my case, but I'm running w7 box at the moment).