QML Applications

QML is a declarative language that allows user interfaces to be described in terms of their visual components and how they interact and relate with one another. It is a highly readable language that was designed to enable components to be interconnected in a dynamic manner, and it allows components to be easily reused and customized within a user interface. Using the QtQuick module, designers and developers can easily build fluid animated user interfaces in QML, and have the option of connecting these user interfaces to any back-end C++ libraries.

What is QML?

QML is a user interface specification and programming language. It allows developers and designers alike to create highly performant, fluidly animated and visually appealing applications. QML offers a highly readable, declarative, JSON-like syntax with support for imperative JavaScript expressions combined with dynamic property bindings.

The QML language and engine infrastructure is provided by the Qt QML module. For in-depth information about the QML language, please see the Qt QML module documentation.

The following pages contain more information about QML:

What is Qt Quick?

Qt Quick is the standard library of types and functionality for QML. It includes visual types, interactive types, animations, models and views, particle effects and shader effects. A QML application developer can get access to all of that functionality with a single import statement.

The QtQuick QML library is provided by the Qt Quick module. For in-depth information about the various QML types and other functionality provided by Qt Quick, please see the Qt Quick module documentation.

QML User Interfaces

For creating or customizing graphical user interfaces, Qt Quick adds visual types, animation types, and other QML types in addition to the standard QML types from Qt QML. Qt Quick Designer is integrated within Qt Creator and supports QtQuick 2 from Qt Creator version 2.7 and onwards.

Buttons, Menus, and other Controls

For a set of basic UI controls, the Qt Quick Controls module implements several controls such as buttons, menus, and views. These controls come with several built-in styles that can be used, and also support the creation of custom styles.

Special Effects

Several Qt modules provide types for creating special effects in applications. Their respective pages contain more information about specific uses.

Viewing Web Content in QML Applications

The QML types, WebEngineView and WebView, render and display dynamic web content. The only difference between the two is that the latter uses a native web view if available. Both these types can load a URL or an HTML string. To read more about them and view code samples, see Qt WebEngine and Qt WebView.

Sensors, Gestures, and Touch Interfaces

The Qt Sensors module allows applications to read information from sensors such as accelerometers and tilt sensors. There is a common QML API for different platforms and can be extended in C++.

Multimedia Content

The Qt Multimedia module enables applications to handle various media content with a convenient set of QML types. These QML types can be extended in C++.

Mobile Devices

Several Qt modules provide QML APIs for networked and mobile devices. The QML types provide access to the Bluetooth, Near-Field Communications (NFC), and GPS-enabled devices.

For more information, visit the Networking and Connectivity and Mobile APIs pages.

Code Samples and Demos

To learn more about uses of QML code, there are several code samples which show how QML types are used. In addition, there are several demos which show how QML code is used in applications.

Advanced Application Development Topics

Other QML Modules

Qt Quick only provides basic visual types and much of Qt's functionality is exposed to QML through other modules. If you require the functionality of those modules, you should browse their QML documentation.

The All QML APIs by Module contains a list of all QML modules in Qt 5.

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