source: trunk/doc/src/declarative/qdeclarativedocument.qdoc@ 846

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/*!
\page qdeclarativedocuments.html
\title QML Documents
\brief A description of QML documents and the kind of content they contain.

\section1 Introduction

A QML document is a block of QML source code.  QML documents generally correspond to files
stored on a disk or at a location on a network, but they can also be constructed directly
from text data.

Here is a simple QML document:

\snippet doc/src/snippets/declarative/qml-documents/non-trivial.qml document

QML documents are always encoded in UTF-8 format.

A QML document always begins with one or more import statements.  To prevent elements 
introduced in later versions from affecting existing QML programs, the element types 
available within a document are controlled by the imported QML \l {Modules}.  That is, 
QML is a \e versioned language.

Syntactically a QML document is self contained; QML does \e not have a preprocessor that 
modifies the document prior to presentation to the QML runtime. \c import statements 
do not "include" code in the document, but instead instruct the QML runtime on how to 
resolve type references found in the document.  Any type reference present in a QML 
document - such as \c Rectangle and \c ListView - including those made within an 
\l {Inline JavaScript}{JavaScript block} or \l {Property Binding}s, are \e resolved based exclusively on the 
import statements.  QML does not import any modules by default, so at least one \c import
statement must be present or no elements will be available!

Each \c id value in a QML document must be unique within that document. They
do not need to be unique across different documents as id values are
resolved according to the document scope.


\section1 Documents as Component Definitions

A QML document defines a single, top-level \l {QDeclarativeComponent}{QML component}.  A QML component 
is a template that is interpreted by the QML runtime to create an object with some predefined 
behaviour.  As it is a template, a single QML component can be "run" multiple times to 
produce several objects, each of which are said to be \e instances of the component.  

Once created, instances are not dependent on the component that created them, so they can 
operate on independent data.  Here is an example of a simple "Button" component (defined
in a \c Button.qml file) that is instantiated four times by \c application.qml.
Each instance is created with a different value for its \c text property:

\table
\row
\o Button.qml
\o application.qml

\row
\o \snippet doc/src/snippets/declarative/qml-documents/qmldocuments.qml document
\o 
\qml
import QtQuick 1.0

Column {
    spacing: 10

    Button { text: "Apple" }
    Button { text: "Orange" }
    Button { text: "Pear" }
    Button { text: "Grape" }
}
\endqml

\image anatomy-component.png

\endtable

Any snippet of QML code can become a component, just by placing it in the file "<Name>.qml"
where <Name> is the new element name, and begins with an \bold uppercase letter.  Note that
the case of all characters in the <Name> are significant on some filesystems, notably
UNIX filesystems.  It is recommended that the case of the filename matches the case of
the component name in QML exactly, regardless of the platform the QML will be deployed to.

These QML component files automatically become available as new QML element types
to other QML components and applications in the same directory.



\section1 Inline Components

In addition to the top-level component that all QML documents define, and any reusable
components placed in separate files, documents may also 
include \e inline components.  Inline components are declared using the 
\l Component element, as can be seen in the first example above.  Inline components share 
all the characteristics of regular top-level components and use the same \c import list as their
containing QML document.  Components are one of the most basic building blocks in QML, and are 
frequently used as "factories" by other elements.  For example, the \l ListView element uses the
\c delegate component as the template for instantiating list items - each list item is just a
new instance of the component with the item specific data set appropriately.

Like other \l {QML Elements}, the \l Component element is an object and must be assigned to a 
property.   \l Component objects may also have an object id.  In the first example on this page,
the inline component is added to the \l Rectangle's \c resources list, and then 
\l {Property Binding} is used to assign the \l Component to the \l ListView's \c delegate 
property.  While using property binding allows the \l Component object to be shared (for example,
if the QML document contained multiple \l ListView's with the same delegate), in this case the 
\l Component could have been assigned directly to the \l ListView's \c delegate.  The QML 
language even contains a syntactic optimization when assigning directly to a component property 
for this case where it will automatically insert the \l Component tag.

These final two examples are behaviorally identical to the original document.

\table
\row
\o
\snippet doc/src/snippets/declarative/qml-documents/inline-component.qml document
\o
\snippet doc/src/snippets/declarative/qml-documents/inline-text-component.qml document
\endtable

\sa QDeclarativeComponent
*/