[Interest] MVC question (using QNetworkConfiguration/QNetworkSession)

[Christian Gagneraud]

Hi there,

I'm building a simple GUI for evaluating QNetworkConfigurationManager, 
QNetworkConfiguration and QNetworkSession.

The goal is to evaluate the usability of these 3 classes and the 
performance/reactivity of the underlying network manager (connman on 
GNU/Linux desktop and embedded device)

I'm running XUbuntu 13.04, later migrated to KDE.
I first used Qt-4.8.4/connman-1.10  shipped with Ubunutu, but as it 
didn't work very well, I ended up using manually built Qt-5.1+ and 
connman 1.16+ (I got rid of any network manager using apt-get remove). 
Later I will have to run this on an embedded device (same techno as the 
BeagleBone Black), ideally using the Yocto project [1] (ex OpenEmbedded).

My GUI is really simple and looks like this:

+---------------------------------------+
|            manager details            |
| [update]                              |
+-----------+---------------------------+
|           |   configuration details   |
| conf list |                           |
|           | [create session]          |
+-----------+---------------------------+
|           |   session details         |
| session   |                           |
| list      |[open] [close] [stop] [del]|
+-----------+---------------------------+
|                                       |
|            Logger view                |
|                                       |
+---------------------------------------+

For now, the 2 lists are bare QListView, the XXX details are views 
implemented as "specialised" widgets (QFrame) and they all have a 
setModel() method: managerView->setModel(manager), 
configurationView->setModel(configuration), ...
And I have implemented a ConfigurationListModel to go with the list view 
(SessionListModel will come later on)

I have connected 
configurationListView->selectionModel()->selectionChanged() signal to do 
a configurationView->setModel(), this works fine.

Now I have to deal with the fact that configurations can change their 
properties, this is indicated by the manager emiting the 
configurationChanged() signal. (QNetworkConfiguration are lightweight 
object and don't have propertyChanged() signals)

So basically i have to do a configurationView()->setModel() when the 
currently selected configuration has changed somehow.

My question is not about how to do this - this is obviously doable -, 
but rather: In this kind of scenario, what is the Best Way (tm) to do 
this kind of things?

Should I make my ConfigurationListModel aware of which model is selected 
and emit a "ready to use" signal when the selection has changed and when 
the currently selected configuration has changed? Is it a good practice 
to make a ListModel aware of which model is currently selected in an 
associated ListView, eg by doing view->setModel() and model->setView()?

This is a really simple app, but I would like to grab the opportunity to 
learn more about Qt MVC implementation and best practices that go with it.

Thanks,
Chris

[1] https://www.yoctoproject.org/