QPluginLoader — PyQt Documentation v6.9.0 (original) (raw)

PyQt6.QtCore.QPluginLoader

Inherits from QObject.

Description¶

The QPluginLoader class loads a plugin at run-time.

QPluginLoader provides access to a Qt plugin. A Qt plugin is stored in a shared library (a DLL) and offers these benefits over shared libraries accessed using QLibrary:

QPluginLoader checks that a plugin is linked against the same version of Qt as the application.
QPluginLoader provides direct access to a root component object (instance()), instead of forcing you to resolve a C function manually.

An instance of a QPluginLoader object operates on a single shared library file, which we call a plugin. It provides access to the functionality in the plugin in a platform-independent way. To specify which plugin to load, either pass a file name in the constructor or set it with setFileName().

The most important functions are load() to dynamically load the plugin file, isLoaded() to check whether loading was successful, and instance() to access the root component in the plugin. The instance() function implicitly tries to load the plugin if it has not been loaded yet. Multiple instances of QPluginLoader can be used to access the same physical plugin.

Once loaded, plugins remain in memory until all instances of QPluginLoader has been unloaded, or until the application terminates. You can attempt to unload a plugin using unload(), but if other instances of QPluginLoader are using the same library, the call will fail, and unloading will only happen when every instance has called unload(). Right before the unloading happens, the root component will also be deleted.

See How to Create Qt Plugins for more information about how to make your application extensible through plugins.

Note that the QPluginLoader cannot be used if your application is statically linked against Qt. In this case, you will also have to link to plugins statically. You can use QLibrary if you need to load dynamic libraries in a statically linked application.

Methods¶

__init__(parent: QObject = None)

Constructs a plugin loader with the given parent.

__init__(Optional[str], parent: QObject = None)

Constructs a plugin loader with the given parent that will load the plugin specified by fileName.

To be loadable, the file’s suffix must be a valid suffix for a loadable library in accordance with the platform, e.g. .so on Unix, - .dylib on macOS and iOS, and .dll on Windows. The suffix can be verified with isLibrary().

errorString() → str

Returns a text string with the description of the last error that occurred.

fileName() → str

instance() → QObject

Returns the root component object of the plugin. The plugin is loaded if necessary. The function returns nullptr if the plugin could not be loaded or if the root component object could not be instantiated.

If the root component object was destroyed, calling this function creates a new instance.

The root component, returned by this function, is not deleted when the QPluginLoader is destroyed. If you want to ensure that the root component is deleted, you should call unload() as soon you don’t need to access the core component anymore. When the library is finally unloaded, the root component will automatically be deleted.

The component object is a QObject. Use qobject_cast() to access interfaces you are interested in.

isLoaded() → bool

Returns true if the plugin is loaded; otherwise returns false.

load() → bool

Loads the plugin and returns true if the plugin was loaded successfully; otherwise returns false. Since instance() always calls this function before resolving any symbols it is not necessary to call it explicitly. In some situations you might want the plugin loaded in advance, in which case you would use this function.

loadHints() → LoadHint

setFileName(Optional[str])

setLoadHints(LoadHint)

@staticmethod
staticInstances() → list[QObject]

Returns a list of static plugin instances (root components) held by the plugin loader.