Tatami

Tatami is a small library setting up the groundwork for writing data management applications. It provides a set of tools for implementing keyboard-driven user interfaces powered by QML.

Using Tatami in a Qt application

The QML components of the Tatami plugin must first be registered, which can typically be done within your main function:

#include <QApplication>
#include <QQmlApplicationEngine>
#include <QtQml>
#include <QUrl>
#include <QQuickStyle>
#include <QIcon>
#include <QDebug>
#include <tatami_plugin.h>
#include <tatami/httpclient.h>

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
  QApplication app(argc, argv);
  QQmlApplicationEngine engine;
  TatamiPlugin tatami;

  TatamiPlugin::qmlEngine = &engine;
  tatami.registerFonts();
  tatami.registerTypes("com.planed.tatami");
  engine.load(QUrl(QStringLiteral("qrc:///main.qml")));
  return app.exec();
}

This should look familiar if you've already implemented QML applications. In this example, we've taken some extra-steps, namely:

• Instantiate the TatamiPlugin global object;
• Initialize the TatamiPlugin::qmlEngine global property, using a pointer to our QQmlApplicationEngine;
• Call the method registerFonts
• Call the method registerTypes.

The parameter to registerTypes is the namespace you'll use when importing Tatami's QML types within your own QML files. The traditional namespace should be com.planed.tatami, but you might customize it however you please.

Tatami QML Application

Tatami comes with an Application component which will manage the contextual behaviors of your user interface: application window, transition between views, breadcrumbs, and toolbar. This component also features a StackView in which your applications views will be displayed.

Here's an example of what your main.qml file could look like, using the Application component:

import QtQuick 2.12
import QtQuick.Controls 2.12
import com.planed.tatami 1.0 as Tatami

Tatami.Application {
  id: application
  title: "My Tatami Application"
  initialView: "Homepage.qml"
}

The Application component extends on the ApplicationWindow component, meaning you can overload any property defined for that component.

The initialView property is an alias to the similarly named property in the application's StackView: use it to define which view will be loaded by default, and will be the root of all your other views.

Tatami Views

A view should provide several properties and transitions for the Application component to properly display them and their contextual informations, the most important of which are:

• Name
• Icon
• Actions

The name and icon of a view will appear in the breadcrumbs, while their actions will both be displayed in the toolbar, and made triggerable through shortcuts when the view is active (meaning the view component matches the currentItem property on the application's StackView).

Tatami provides a base component which your views should extend on to expose these features. Let's use it to create a Homepage.qml view:

import QtQuick 2.12
import com.planed.tatami 1.0 as Tatami

Tatami.View {
  viewName: "Homepage"
  viewIcon: "homepage"

  Text {
    anchors.centerIn: parent
    text: "This tatami is ready to be used."
  }
}

Navigation

The Application component also provides three JavaScript functions which should be used to navigate between your views:

• goToView is used to stack a new view on top of the current one. This is the most common way to move from one view to another.

• replaceView is similar to goToView, but instead of stacking a new view on top of the current one, it will replace the current view with a new one. The transitions used will communicate this to the user by popping the current view to the right instead of the left side.

• closeCurrentView can be used at anytime to close the current view and move back to the previous one. It produces the same behavior as the Back button, which is by default always present in the toolbar.

These functions can be called from anywhere in your application, using the id you set for your Application component. In the main.qml we created for this example, the id was application, meaning these functions could be used as such:

import QtQuick 2.12
import QtQuick.Controls 2.12
import com.planed.tatami 1.0 as Tatami

Tatami.View {
  Button {
    anchors.centerIn: parent
    text: "Go to next view"
    onClicked: application.goToView("MyView.qml")
  }
}

In some cases, you will need to send parameters to the views you are loading. To that end, the goToView and replaceView functions also provide an optional parameter in which you may specify the properties of the new view you wish to customize.

For instance, let's create a MyView.qml file such as:

import QtQuick 2.12
import QtQuick.Controls 2.12
import com.planed.tatami 1.0 as Tatami

Tatami.View {
  property alias text: textDisplay.text

  Text {
    id: textDisplay
    text: "Default text"
    anchors.centerIn: parent
  }
}

We may then overload the text property on textDisplay by opening the views with more specific calls to goToView:

import QtQuick 2.12
import QtQuick.Controls 2.12
import QtQuick.Layouts 1.3
import com.planed.tatami 1.0 as Tatami

Tatami.View {
  ColumnLayout {
    anchors.centerIn: parent
    Button {
      text: "Option 0"
      onClicked: application.goToView("MyView.qml") // No text overload
    }
    Button {
      text: "Option 1"
      onClicked: application.goToView("MyView.qml", { text: "Overloaded text" })
    }
    Button {
      text: "Option 2"
      onClicked: application.goToView("MyView.qml", { text: "Alternative text overload" })
    }
  }
}

Actions

Action represents an abstract user interface action that can have shortcuts and can be assigned to menu items and toolbar buttons.

Views can expose a set of actions using the ActionSet and Action component:

• The Action component from Tatami inherits the Action component from QtQuick.Controls.
• The ActionSet component manages a set of actions, enabling or disabling them altogether. It may also be bound to a View which will make the action list appear in the toolbar.

Adding actions to a view

Adding actions to a view is pretty simple: we just use the viewActionsComponent property, allowing us to define a custom ActionSet component:

import QtQuick 2.12
import com.planed.tatami 1.0 as Tatami

Tatami.View {
  viewName: "My view with actions"

  Text {
    id: viewText
    anchors.centerIn: parent
    text: "No action were triggered."
  }

  viewActionsComponent: Component {
    Tatami.ActionSet {
      actions: [action1, action2]

      Tatami.Action {
        id: action1
        text: "Action 1"
        onTriggered: viewText.text = "Action #1 was triggered"
      }

      Tatami.Action {
        id: action2
        text: "Action 2"
        onTriggered: viewText.text = "Action #2 was triggered"
      }
    }
  }
}

Swapping action sets within a view

In some cases, you may want to make different actions available to your user depending on your own view's context. This can be achieved by declaring multiple ActionSet components and updating the viewActionsComponent property at runtime:

import QtQuick 2.12
import com.planed.tatami 1.0 as Tatami

Tatami.View {
  viewName: "My view with multiple action sets"

  Text {
    id: viewText
    anchors.centerIn: parent
    text: "No action were triggered."
  }

  // Defining a property determining which ActionSet component should be active
  property int actionState: 0

  // Declaring a bunch of ActionSet
  Component {
    id: defaultActionSet
    Tatami.ActionSet {
      actions: [action0]
      Tatami.Action {
        id: action0
        text: "Start"
        onTriggered: actionState = 1
      }
    }
  }

  Component {
    id: altActionSet1
    Tatami.ActionSet {
      actions: [action1]
      Tatami.Action {
        id: action1
        text: "Action 1"
        onTriggered: {
          viewText.text = "Action #1 was triggered";
          actionState = 2;
        }
      }
    }
  }

  Component {
    id: altActionSet2
    Tatami.ActionSet {
      actions: [action2]
      Tatami.Action {
        id: action2
        text: "Action 2"
        onTriggered: {
          viewText.text = "Action #2 was triggered";
          actionState = 1;
        }
      }
    }
  }

  // Picking the current action set based on the current value of `actionState`
  viewActionsComponent: pickActionSet(actionState)

  function pickActionSet(state) {
    if (state == 0)
      return defaultActionSet;
    return state == 1 ? altActionSet1 : altActionSet2;
  }
}

Such a system allows different set of actions to be made available to the user in the same view. Furthermore, declaring the ActionSet within a Component ensures that the action sets aren't always instantiated within the view: instead, only the component currently assigned to the viewActionsComponent property is instantiated. This protects you against conflicting shortcuts from multiple action sets.

Menus

Tatami also comes with a couple of helper components to help you quickly build menus. Let's create a simple menu view by refactoring our menu from the Navigation tutorial:

import QtQuick 2.12
import com.planed.tatami 1.0 as Tatami

Tatami.Menu {
  viewName: "My menu"
  viewIcon: "start-here"

  Tatami.MenuEntry {
    text: "Option 0"
    icon.name: "start-here"
    onTriggered: goToView("MyView.qml")
  }

  Tatami.MenuEntry {
    text: "Option 1"
    icon.name: "start-here"
    onTriggered: goToView("MyView.qml", { text: "Overloaded text" })
  }

  Tatami.MenuEntry {
    text: "Option 2"
    icon.name: "start-here"
    onTriggered: goToView("MyView.qml", { text: "Alternative text overload" })
  }
}

Note that we are not calling goToView from the application object anymore. That's because Menu comes with its own implementation for goToView, implementing different behavior depending on whether the state of the Menu view is active or stacked.

Services

Setting the global application font

#include <QApplication>
#include <tatami_plugin.h>

void setDefaultApplicationFont(QApplication& app)
{
  int defaultFontSize = 18;
  QFont defaultFont(Tatami::defaultFont, defaultFontSize);

  app.setFont(defaultFont);
}