PyQt{4,5} or PySide?

The question whether to use PyQt4, PyQt5 or PySide can have significant impact on which platforms, other applications, libraries and extensions your code may be compatible with. When writing anything but a small script, there will probably be that time when you wish you had based your code on another toolkit to be able to use some particular awesome library, snippet or maybe even just one specific method. What to do then? Maintain different branches for all the backends?

The answer is that it's much simpler than that and it doesn't have to be a static choice in your code. First, the PyQt4, PyQt5 and PySide APIs are not so different, so most things just work when replacing the import statements. Second, python modules are just regular objects, so the imported Qt modules can be stored in global variables which can then act polymorphically according to which module was imported. Third, python modules can execute arbitrary code, so you can pick the actual backend at runtime based on the environment or command line. This is best done in a dedicated .qt module which should be used to proxy all the Qt imports within your application.

Therefore, it may be enough to change your import statements to something like the following:

from .qt import Qt, QtCore, QtGui

The .qt module in my application relies on qtconsole (which I use to embed a ipython shell in my application):

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from qtconsole.qt_loaders import load_qt
import os

__all__ = ['QtCore', 'QtGui', 'QtSvg', 'QT_API', 'uic']

api_pref = os.environ.get('PYQT_API') or 'pyqt,pyqt5'
api_opts = api_pref.lower().split(',')

QtCore, QtGui, QtSvg, QT_API = load_qt(api_opts)

Qt = QtCore.Qt

if QT_API == 'pyqt':
    from PyQt4 import uic
elif QT_API == 'pyqt5':
    from PyQt5 import uic

If you don't want to depend on such heavy gear, you can of course deliver your own loader code. Just take a peek at qtconsole's implementation, so you don't miss any important detail.

KeyboardInterrupt (Ctrl-C)

The thing that initially annoyed me the most when writing and testing my shiny (tt) new application, was that I could not quit it by pressing Ctrl-C in the console as I'm used to. This is particularly unpleasant if no window was opened or the Qt loop continues for some reason even after the last window was closed/hidden. Also, if you have another background thread running which is not properly managed by your main window, the application will live on even after the Qt event loop has stopped.

The issue is rooted in python's interrupt handling which only works while the interpreter is active, and the Qt event loop's ignorance about the python interpreter. The question has a more detailed explanation on the PyQt mailing list.

Given there are plenty of cases where Ctrl-C comes in handy, you can find solutions on stackoverflow. My personal implementation is an adaptation of the accepted answer that safe-guards against a few more edge-cases:

import signal
from .qt import QtCore, QtGui


# Call this function in your main after creating the QApplication
def setup_interrupt_handling():
    """Setup handling of KeyboardInterrupt (Ctrl-C) for PyQt."""
    signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, _interrupt_handler)
    # Regularly run some (any) python code, so the signal handler gets a
    # chance to be executed:
    safe_timer(50, lambda: None)


# Define this as a global function to make sure it is not garbage
# collected when going out of scope:
def _interrupt_handler(signum, frame):
    """Handle KeyboardInterrupt: quit application."""
    QtGui.QApplication.quit()


def safe_timer(timeout, func, *args, **kwargs):
    """
    Create a timer that is safe against garbage collection and overlapping
    calls. See: http://ralsina.me/weblog/posts/BB974.html
    """
    def timer_event():
        try:
            func(*args, **kwargs)
        finally:
            QtCore.QTimer.singleShot(timeout, timer_event)
    QtCore.QTimer.singleShot(timeout, timer_event)

There is also an interesting solution based on signal.set_wakeup_fd, but I ruled this one out as not being cross-platform and introducing too much complexity.

Handling exceptions (PyQt5)

If you're using PyQt5, you may have noticed that uncaught python exceptions cause the program to abort. This is probably not what you want in a GUI application where an exception that appears as the result of some dialog can very well be irrelevant for the rest of the program. In any case, you want to define a consistent behaviour across PyQt4 and PyQt5. This is achieved by explicitly setting an excepthook according to your needs:

import sys
import traceback

# then, in your main:
sys.excepthook = traceback.print_exception