Editing Plugins Tutorial (section)

=== Filling the GUI with Widgets ===

[[Image:designer-demo-plugin.png|thumb|right|400px|Screenshot of Qt Designer]]

The most convenient and maintainable way to create user interfaces with Qt is by using the [http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtdesigner-manual.html Qt Designer].
Follow these steps to get started:

# Create a new "Widget" form (New Form &gt; templates/forms &gt; Widget &gt; Create)
# Drag widgets like "Push Button" or "Line Edit" into your form
# Name your widgets ("objectName" in the "Property Editor"), this name will become a Python variable in your code
# Save as a UI file (<code>*.ui</code>) inside the <code>pymol2-demo-plugin</code> directory

PyMOL provides a utility function to load a UI file into a parent widget: <code>pymol.Qt.utils.loadUi(filename, widget)</code>

<syntaxhighlight lang="python">
    # filename of our UI file
    uifile = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'demowidget.ui')

    # load the UI file into our dialog
    from pymol.Qt.utils import loadUi
    form = loadUi(uifile, dialog)
</syntaxhighlight>