QMessageBox "show details"

Question

When you open a QMessageBox with detailed text set it has the show details button. I would like the details to be displayed by default, rather than the user having to click on the Show Details... button first.

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 18 '16 at 12:15

As far as I can tell from a quick look through the source, there is is no easy way to directly open the details text, or indeed access the "Show Details..." button. The best method I could find was to:

Iterate through all buttons on the message box.
Extract the one with the role ActionRole, as this corresponds to the "Show Details..." button.
Call the click method manually on this.

A code sample of this in action:

#include <QAbstractButton>
#include <QApplication>
#include <QMessageBox>

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    QApplication app(argc, argv);

    QMessageBox messageBox;
    messageBox.setText("Some text");
    messageBox.setDetailedText("More details go here");

    // Loop through all buttons, looking for one with the "ActionRole" button
    // role. This is the "Show Details..." button.
    QAbstractButton *detailsButton = NULL;

    foreach (QAbstractButton *button, messageBox.buttons()) {
        if (messageBox.buttonRole(button) == QMessageBox::ActionRole) {
            detailsButton = button;
            break;
        }
    }

    // If we have found the details button, then click it to expand the
    // details area.
    if (detailsButton) {
        detailsButton->click();
    }

    // Show the message box.
    messageBox.exec();

    return app.exec();
}

Your example did not work for me. When I iterate through the buttons, it only finds the standard buttons (e.g., "Yes" and "No"). The "Show Details" button was not among them at the time I was crawling through them. Using Qt version 4.7.4. — Mike Finch, Jan 05 '18 at 22:51
Not sure sorry - from memory I tested this on Qt 5.x. Maybe try looking through each `QAbstractButton` child of the message box using a recursive `findChildren` call? — ajshort, Jan 09 '18 at 05:00
Yes, I had tried searching for the "Show Details" button via `findChildren()` also. I can indeed find that "Show Details" button in that way, but its role at the time I find it is `InvalidRole`. I called `click()` on that button anyway, just to see what would happen. It had no effect. — Mike Finch, Jan 11 '18 at 14:30
You can fuse the last if with the loop: ``` QAbstractButton *detailsButton = nullptr; foreach (QAbstractButton *button, messageBox.buttons()) { if (messageBox.buttonRole(button) == QMessageBox::ActionRole) { detailsButton = button; detailsButton->click(); // click it to expand the text break; } } ``` — mmerle, Apr 22 '21 at 09:20

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 02 '18 at 20:47

This function will expand the details by default and also resize the text box to a bigger size:

#include <QTextEdit>
#include <QMessageBox>
#include <QAbstractButton>

void showDetailsInQMessageBox(QMessageBox& messageBox)
{
    foreach (QAbstractButton *button, messageBox.buttons())
    {
        if (messageBox.buttonRole(button) == QMessageBox::ActionRole)
        {
            button->click();
            break;
        }
    }
    QList<QTextEdit*> textBoxes = messageBox.findChildren<QTextEdit*>();
    if(textBoxes.size())
        textBoxes[0]->setFixedSize(750, 250);
}

...  //somewhere else

QMessageBox box;
showDetailsInQMessageBox(box);

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 22 '21 at 09:26

On Qt5 at least:

    QMessageBox msgBox;
    msgBox.setText("Some text");
    msgBox.setDetailedText(text);

    // Search the "Show Details..." button
    foreach (QAbstractButton *button, msgBox.buttons())
    {
        if (msgBox.buttonRole(button) == QMessageBox::ActionRole)
        {
            button->click(); // click it to expand the text
            break;
        }
    }

    msgBox.exec();

QMessageBox "show details"

3 Answers3