Qt Signals and Slots The new Qt5 connection syntax

Example

The conventional connect syntax that uses SIGNAL and SLOT macros works entirely at runtime, which has two drawbacks: it has some runtime overhead (resulting also in binary size overhead), and there's no compile-time correctness checking. The new syntax addresses both issues. Before checking the syntax in an example, we'd better know what happens in particular.

Let's say we are building a house and we want to connect the cables. This is exactly what connect function does. Signals and slots are the ones needing this connection. The point is if you do one connection, you need to be careful about the further overlaping connections. Whenever you connect a signal to a slot, you are trying to tell the compiler that whenever the signal was emitted, simply invoke the slot function. This is what exactly happens.

Here's a sample main.cpp:

#include <QApplication>
#include <QDebug>
#include <QTimer>

inline void onTick()
{
   qDebug() << "onTick()";
}

struct OnTimerTickListener {
   void onTimerTick()
   {
       qDebug() << "OnTimerTickListener::onTimerTick()";
   }
};

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    QApplication app(argc, argv);

    OnTimerTickListener listenerObject;

    QTimer timer;
    // Connecting to a non-member function
    QObject::connect(&timer, &QTimer::timeout, onTick);
    // Connecting to an object member method
    QObject::connect(&timer, &QTimer::timeout, &listenerObject, &OnTimerTickListener::onTimerTick);
    // Connecting to a lambda
    QObject::connect(&timer, &QTimer::timeout, [](){
        qDebug() << "lambda-onTick";
    });    

    return app.exec();
}

Hint: the old syntax (SIGNAL/SLOT macros) requires that the Qt metacompiler (MOC) is run for any class that has either slots or signals. From the coding standpoint that means that such classes need to have the Q_OBJECT macro (which indicates the necessity to run MOC on this class).

The new syntax, on the other hand, still requires MOC for signals to work, but not for slots. If a class only has slots and no signals, it need not have the Q_OBJECT macro and hence may not invoke the MOC, which not only reduces the final binary size but also reduces compilation time (no MOC call and no subsequent compiler call for the generated *_moc.cpp file).