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Tech architecture

Dependencies

Software Version Docs Support
PyInstaller - link -
Python 3.5 link Gitter, SO
Qt through PyQt 5.9 Qt Gitter, #pyqt @ freenode IRC, list
SQLite through sqlite3 - py module, official Gitter
unittest + qttest unittest qttest Gitter

The only external dependency for the software itself is PyQt5. In general we'd like to keep the number of external dependencies to a minimum to avoid complications

Application structure

  1. User interacts with the application
  2. Qt sends signal
  3. Application catches the signal (through the connected function)
    • Handler functions are named with the prefix on_
  4. Handler function checks the updating_gui_bool variable and exits if True
  5. Handler function updates the model/database
  6. Handler function emits a custom signal (a pyqtSignal we have created ourselves)
    • Custom signals are named with the prefix _signal
  7. Custom signal arrives in main_win.py
  8. The update_gui function in main_win.py is called
  9. This update_gui function in main_win.py then calls update_gui functions for its child objects
  10. The update_gui functions set the updating_gui_bool variable to True at the start
  11. The update_gui functions update their respective GUIs by reading data from the model/database
  12. The update_gui functions set the updating_gui_bool variable to False at the end

Some of Qt's signals are fired only at user interaction, but often they are also fired at a programmatic change. To avoid infinite loops we set a updating_gui_bool when needed

Code Conventions

These things that are different from PEP8 or standard Python recommendations:

  • one class per file (plus minor supporting classes)
  • 120 chars max per line

Variable naming

Prefixes: None used at the moment

Suffixes:

  • _l[x], or _wt[x] where wt_/l_ stands for widget/layout, and [x] is a number which describes the level of the widget or layout --- this helps us understand the structure of the application in places where there are nested layouts
  • _[type], for example _int --- this helps us be aware of type
    • For Qt the suffixes start with a q, for example qpb is short for qPushButton

Automatic testing

unittest and QtTest are used for auto-testing

Continuous Integration

Code coverage

For coverage.py to discover the subdirectories of the root dir specified with --source we need to have an __init__.py file for each directory/package

Travis CI

Python documentation

We need to enable xvfb to do GUI auto-testing

Also see the technical research page on the wiki