Variables contained in a QToolTip not updating automatically

Question

I have a QToolTip on a QLineEdit and the tooltip contains variables in the text. The tooltip code is contained in the init. The problem is that the variable values in the tooltip do not update automatically when they are changed in the operation of the program. For example, I hover over the line edit and values appear in the tooltip. I change the program, go back to the line edit, and variables in the tooltip have not changed.

I can fix the issue by moving the .setToolTip to a function and calling the function EACH time ANYTHING is changed in the program, but that seems like overkill, especially when 99% of the program changes have nothing to do with this particular tooltip).

Are variables supposed to update automatically? Here is the tooltip setup code contained in the init.

self.ui.YourSSAmount.setToolTip(
        '<span>Click Reports/Social Security to see your<br>SS income at each start age'
        '<br><br>Your inf adj FRA amt at age {}:&nbsp;&nbsp;${:,.0f}'
        '<br>Age adjustment:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;{:.0f}%'
        '<br>SS Income at age {}:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;${:,.0f}</span>'.format(
            self.generator.YouSSStartAge, self.generator.your_new_FRA_amt,
            self.generator.SS66.get(self.generator.YouSSStartAge, 1.32) * 100, self.generator.YouSSStartAge,
            self.generator.YourSSAmount))

Answer 1

The setToolTip method takes the text and stores it, and is not notified if any of the variables used to form the text change.

Given this there are 2 possible solutions:

• Update the tooltip every time a variable changes:

  from PyQt5 import QtCore, QtWidgets
  
  
  class Widget(QtWidgets.QWidget):
      def __init__(self, parent=None):
          super().__init__(parent)
  
          self.le = QtWidgets.QLineEdit()
  
          lay = QtWidgets.QVBoxLayout(self)
          lay.addWidget(self.le)
  
          self.foo = QtCore.QDateTime.currentDateTime().toString()
          self.update_tooltip()
          timer = QtCore.QTimer(self, timeout=self.on_timeout)
          timer.start()
  
      def on_timeout(self):
          self.foo = QtCore.QDateTime.currentDateTime().toString()
          # every time any variable used to build the tooltip changes
          # then the text of the tooltip must be updated
          self.update_tooltip()
  
      def update_tooltip(self):
          # update tooltip text
          self.setToolTip("dt: {}".format(self.foo))
  
  
  if __name__ == "__main__":
      app = QtWidgets.QApplication([])
  
      w = Widget()
      w.show()
  
      app.exec_()
  

• Override the toolTip to take the text using the variables:

  from PyQt5 import QtCore, QtWidgets
  
  
  class LineEdit(QtWidgets.QLineEdit):
      def __init__(self, parent=None):
          super().__init__(parent)
          self._foo = ""
  
      @property
      def foo(self):
          return self._foo
  
      @foo.setter
      def foo(self, foo):
          self._foo = foo
  
      def event(self, e):
          if e.type() == QtCore.QEvent.ToolTip:
              text = "dt:{}".format(self.foo)
              QtWidgets.QToolTip.showText(e.globalPos(), text, self, QtCore.QRect(), -1)
              e.accept()
              return True
          return super().event(e)
  
  
  class Widget(QtWidgets.QWidget):
      def __init__(self, parent=None):
          super().__init__(parent)
  
          self.le = LineEdit()
  
          lay = QtWidgets.QVBoxLayout(self)
          lay.addWidget(self.le)
  
          self.le.foo = QtCore.QDateTime.currentDateTime().toString()
  
          timer = QtCore.QTimer(self, timeout=self.on_timeout)
          timer.start()
  
      def on_timeout(self):
          self.le.foo = QtCore.QDateTime.currentDateTime().toString()
  
  
  if __name__ == "__main__":
      app = QtWidgets.QApplication([])
  
      w = Widget()
      w.show()
  
      app.exec_()