QLineEdit: displaying overlong text as a tooltip if hovering with mouse

c++, qlineedit, qt, tooltip

Solution

I would create a custom class derived from QLineEdit like so:

#ifndef LINEEDIT_H
#define LINEEDIT_H

#include <QtGui>

class LineEdit : public QLineEdit
{
    Q_OBJECT

public:
    LineEdit();

public slots:
    void changeTooltip(QString);
};

LineEdit::LineEdit()
{
    connect(this, SIGNAL(textChanged(QString)), this, SLOT(changeTooltip(QString)));
}

void LineEdit::changeTooltip(QString tip)
{
    QFont font = this->font();
    QFontMetrics metrics(font);
    int width = this->width();

    if(metrics.width(tip) > width)
    {
        this->setToolTip(tip);
    }
    else
    {
        this->setToolTip("");
    }
}

#include "moc_LineEdit.cpp"

#endif // LINEEDIT_H

Then just add it to whatever:

#include <QtGui>
#include "LineEdit.h"

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    QApplication app(argc, argv);

    LineEdit edit;

    edit.show();

    return app.exec();
}

Problem

Under Windows, I've seen a nice feature: If I hover with the mouse over a short text field which contains overlong text not fitting completely into the field, a tooltip opens, displaying the complete contents of the text field. Can someone point me to a code snippet which does this with QLineEdit?

Original source