Two or more shortcuts for one push button

Question

I need to have several shortcuts for one push button. For example Ctrl+W and Enter and Return (Enter and Return are different in Qt), any of them would cause a click on the button. How to do this? If the button was QAction, I would call setShortcuts() ( See Two shortcuts for one action which is NOT a duplicate. It is different, relates to QAction not QPushButton. ) but QPushButton has only setShortcut() (singular), which seems to not allow this. What solution or hack wold you suggest?

set shortcuts for QAction, conect action's trigerred signal to same slot you connect pushbutton's on_click signal. — Andrew Kashpur, Apr 12 '18 at 10:32
A hack? OK, just redirect several shortcuts from their slots to whatever you need xD — Smit Ycyken, Apr 12 '18 at 10:32
@Clearer so that you can use the numpad enter or the central return button ... — UKMonkey, Apr 12 '18 at 10:39
I could create actions to call the same slot as the button calls but this does not animate the click on the button. I tried connecting the actions to `animateClick()` slot of the button but it does not visualize the click either. — HiFile.app - best file manager, Apr 12 '18 at 10:41
Possible duplicate of [Two shortcuts for one action](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23388754/two-shortcuts-for-one-action) — Clearer, Apr 12 '18 at 10:42
@UKMonkey - thank you - `Return` and `Enter`- this was exactly the main reason why I came up with this question. This is a bit annoying here, whenever I ask a question, there is always someone asking "Why do you need this?" Well, I need it, otherwise I would not ask. :) — HiFile.app - best file manager, Apr 12 '18 at 10:44
@Clearer I have already linked this in my original question. And I explained why this does not work in my case. — HiFile.app - best file manager, Apr 12 '18 at 10:45
@V.K. don't forget though half the questions here are XY problems - they're asking to help you better; in addition if it's a good reason, then they learn something ... win win! :) — UKMonkey, Apr 12 '18 at 10:46
XY problems are usually more complicated stuff. I believe this one is very simple. As the last resort I will override the `QPushButton`, intercept `keyPressEvent` and emit some click event to the button to visualize it. But I believe this overkill for such a simple thing. I hope there is simpler solution. :) — HiFile.app - best file manager, Apr 12 '18 at 10:48
@V.K. you could always catch the ctrl+w and then mark the button as selected - then either enter button, or space will trigger it — UKMonkey, Apr 12 '18 at 10:53
@V.K., when people ask about hacks and extraordinary methods, mostly their question is XY problem. — Smit Ycyken, Apr 12 '18 at 11:00

HiFile.app - best file manager · Accepted Answer · 2018-04-12T11:35:20.973

OK, I have got a solution which is not that hacky. I can create a QPushButton and a QAction, then set multiple shortcuts for QAction using QAction::setShortcuts() and connect this action to QPushButton::animateClick(). At first this solution did not work because I called connect(action, &QAction::triggered, button, &QPushButton::animateClick);. The problem was with invisible default arguments. QAction::triggered sends true/false indicating whether the action is checked. But QPushButton::animatedClick expects number of milliseconds to remain visually 'pressed'. Therefore it remained 'pressed' only for 0 or 1 millisecond, which is not enough to notice it (the default value of the argument is 100 milliseconds). This can be solved using lambda, hence:

// 'this' refers to a parent widget
auto action = new QAction(this);
action->setShortcuts({ tr("Ctrl+W"), tr("Return"), tr("Enter") });
this->addAction(action);
auto button = new QPushButton(tr("Hey, click me!"));
connect(action, &QAction::triggered, [button](){ button->animateClick(); });

And that's it.

Two or more shortcuts for one push button

1 Answers1