Qt Is Working On An HTTP Web Server Module

[brrrrttttt]

It's weird that people seem to think that every application is forced to use every Qt module... Qt is an application development framework (primarily a GUI one, but not exclusively), not some monolithic application runtime.

[kretikus]

Finally! They dropped the QHttpServer class from Qt4 and we were forced to use some unmaintained classes which were ported from Qt4 to Qt5 but never managed to be added to the official Qt5 release.

Yes we wrote our Server Backend in Qt, the web pages are served by lighttpd, the Ajax calls by our Server component.

[Vistaus]

I guess with this they can render Qt code on the web. Like GTK3 have the Broadway project that renders to the web.

Didn't Qt have something like that already, given the fact that Qt is more advanced than GTK (according to most people)?

[uid313]

Didn't Qt have something like that already, given the fact that Qt is more advanced than GTK (according to most people)?

Not that I know off.
Both GTK and Qt are good.
Qt is written in C++ so are a great choice for cross-platform applications written in C++.
GTK is written in C so its easier to bind it with other languages that support C bindings.

Both GTK and Qt are good.
Me personally, I wouldn't want to work with either C or C++ though.
GTK is quite nice with Python over GObject Introspection.

GTK can also be styled with CSS which is very popular and widely known among web developers. Though the XML format of GtkBuilder is rather verbose, and much less pleasant than HTML or XAML.

Qt can be styled extensively too, to the point of even being used by games, such as Tibia.

[Vistaus]

Not that I know off.
Both GTK and Qt are good.
Qt is written in C++ so are a great choice for cross-platform applications written in C++.
GTK is written in C so its easier to bind it with other languages that support C bindings.

Both GTK and Qt are good.
Me personally, I wouldn't want to work with either C or C++ though.
GTK is quite nice with Python over GObject Introspection.

GTK can also be styled with CSS which is very popular and widely known among web developers. Though the XML format of GtkBuilder is rather verbose, and much less pleasant than HTML or XAML.

Qt can be styled extensively too, to the point of even being used by games, such as Tibia.

Qt can be styled more though, to the point of engines like Kvantum and QtCurve. But yeah, both GTK and Qt are good, generally.

[starshipeleven]

Is this to be installed on the end user's desktop machine? Are they expecting the end user to configure the http server when two or more QT apps are installed that need to access the http server? If the expectation is that the apps are to pull data from a remote web server then why re-invent the wheel and not an engine plug-in?

This is a library to integrate http server functionality in applications. So each application will have its own web server, listening on the host IP at a specific "default" port chosen by the application developer (and usually you can change this in the application's own configuration panels).

Similar to Transmission or other applications with a web interface already.

[veeableful]

Finally! Sometimes I use Qt as some kind of C++ standard library for command-line stuff and when I need to serve API, I use libsoup. This would make it easier for me.

[MoonMoon]

It's weird that people seem to think that every application is forced to use every Qt module... Qt is an application development framework (primarily a GUI one, but not exclusively), not some monolithic application runtime.

This! You can write perfectly fine Qt applications that never touch a single GUI library. People are just to fixated on the desktop parts to realize that Qt has already networking components and having a HTTP server would be a fine addition. I don't see people complaining about the inbuilt HTTP server in Python, either.

[carewolf]

I guess there are quite a few desktop apps that have a web front end component to them. For example:

• The Transmission Bittorrent client has a very powerful web front end for allowing remote control.
• VLC (the media player) has a web front end.

I'm not saying that this http server idea is good or bad; just that there are Desktop apps out there already in use with a web interface feature. So apps could benefit from using a QT HTTP server instead of rolling their own. They'll save time and any effort they provide to enhance this HTTP server is shared between all projects.

Primary internal use-case is automated testing. It is much easier to write small compacts auto-tests of network stuff, when you can include the server in the same binary instead of having to launch external stuff, or write one yourself every time. And as other people have pointed out, such a "module" existed in Qt4, and was sort of kept around and used by some users.