Qt equivalent of .NET data binding?

Question

Is there an equivalent of .NET\'s data binding in Qt?

I want to populate some combo boxes and other widgets with QStrings that refer to specific entities in my database.

Answer 1

One way is using Qt Model/View Classes (with base at QAbstractItemModel), but they need that you widget inherits QAbstractItemView (this is widgets like QTableView etc.).
If you want map Qt model to set of widgets, which haven't nothing common with QAbstractItemView you can use QDataWidgetMapper, which maps separate widget to Qt Model/View indexes. But anyway, as said Aaron Digulla, you must write some boiler plate code...

Answer 2

Well, for combobox specifically, you can set a model. For QObjects in general you can use the notify signal for properties to connect or other non-property related signals. I think there is another way to do it but I can't recall.

Answer 3

As the user nonchalant mentioned in a comment you can use the QDataWidgetMapper class. This is quite an easy way of binding arbitrary widgets to data that is stored in a QAbstractItemModel.

The example on the linked page shows in a few lines of code, how you can link your data model to common used input widgets:

QDataWidgetMapper *mapper = new QDataWidgetMapper;
mapper->setModel(model);
mapper->addMapping(mySpinBox, 0);
mapper->addMapping(myLineEdit, 1);
mapper->addMapping(myCountryChooser, 2);
mapper->toFirst();