Qt SCXML Media Player Example (Dynamic)

A widget-based application that sends data to and receives it from a dynamically loaded ECMAScript data model.

Media Player Example (Dynamic) demonstrates how to access data from a dynamically loaded ECMAScript data model.

The UI is created using Qt Widgets.

Running the Example

To run the example from Qt Creator, open the Welcome mode and select the example from Examples. For more information, visit Building and Running an Example.

Using the ECMAScript Data Model

We specify the data model as a value of the datamodel attribute of the <scxml> element in mediaplayer-common/mediaplayer.scxml:

 <scxml
     xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/07/scxml"
     version="1.0"
     name="MediaPlayerStateMachine"
     initial="stopped"
     datamodel="ecmascript"
 >
     <datamodel>
         <data id="media"/>
     </datamodel>

Dynamically Loading the State Machine

We link against the Qt SCXML module by adding the following line to the project build files.

With qmake to the mediaplayer-widgets-dynamic.pro

 QT += widgets scxml

With cmake to the CMakeLists.txt

 find_package(Qt6 COMPONENTS Core Gui Widgets Scxml)

 target_link_libraries(mediaplayer-widgets-dynamic PUBLIC
     Qt6::Core
     Qt6::Gui
     Qt6::Scxml
     Qt6::Widgets
 )

We dynamically create and instantiate the state machine in mediaplayer-wigdets-dynamic/mediaplayer-widgets-dynamic.cpp:

 #include "../mediaplayer-common/mainwindow.h"

 #include <QApplication>
 #include <QScxmlStateMachine>

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

     auto machine = QScxmlStateMachine::fromFile(
                 QStringLiteral(":mediaplayer.scxml"));
     MainWindow mainWindow(machine);
     machine->setParent(&mainWindow);

     machine->start();
     mainWindow.show();
     return app.exec();
 }

Connecting to States

The media player state machine will send out events when users tap a control and when playback starts or stops, as specified in the SCXML file:

     <state id="stopped">
         <transition event="tap" cond="isValidMedia()" target="playing"/>
     </state>

     <state id="playing">
         <onentry>
             <assign location="media" expr="_event.data.media"/>
             <send event="playbackStarted">
                 <param name="media" expr="media"/>
             </send>
         </onentry>

         <onexit>
             <send event="playbackStopped">
                 <param name="media" expr="media"/>
             </send>
         </onexit>

         <transition event="tap" cond="!isValidMedia() || media === _event.data.media" target="stopped"/>
         <transition event="tap" cond="isValidMedia() &amp;&amp; media !== _event.data.media" target="playing"/>
     </state>

To be notified when a state machine sends out an event, we connect to the corresponding signals:

     stateMachine->connectToEvent("playbackStarted", this, &MainWindow::started);
     stateMachine->connectToEvent("playbackStopped", this, &MainWindow::stopped);

Example project @ code.qt.io