📖 6 min🎯Difficulty:

Prerequisites:Objects

You'll build:A colored box whose appearance you control through property changes

The Problem

Every visual aspect of a QML object — its size, color, position, text, opacity — is controlled by properties. You've already used properties like width, color, and text. But properties in QML are more powerful than simple assignments: they can hold expressions that update automatically, they can be animated, and you can define your own.

The Naive Approach

In most programming languages, you set an object's attributes once and they stay fixed:

rect.width = 200
rect.color = "blue"

If something changes that should affect those values, you write code to update them. For a desktop shell with constantly changing data (clock, battery, workspace), this means endless manual updates.

💡Mental Model

Properties in QML are not static assignments — they're like spreadsheet cells. If cell A1 contains =B1 + C1, changing B1 automatically recalculates A1. QML properties work the same way: you can bind one property to an expression involving other properties, and the runtime keeps the result current.

The Idea

A QML property has a name, a type, and a value. Types include basic ones like int, real, string, color, bool, and url, as well as complex types like font and rect. Properties can be:

• Set to a constant value: width: 200
• Bound to an expression: width: parent.width * 0.5
• Animated: via Behavior or Animation types
• Custom: declared on your own objects with property type name

Let's Build It

import QtQuick
import QtQuick.Window

Window {
  width: 400
  height: 300
  visible: true
  title: "Properties"

  property string greeting: "Hello!"
  property int count: 0

  Rectangle {
    id: box
    x: 50; y: 50
    width: 300
    height: 100
    color: count % 2 === 0 ? "#4ecdc4" : "#ff6b6b"
    radius: 8

    Text {
      text: parent.parent.greeting + " Count: " + parent.parent.count
      anchors.centerIn: parent
      color: "white"
      font.pixelSize: 18
    }
  }

  Text {
    text: "Click the window to increment"
    anchors.bottom: parent.bottom
    anchors.horizontalCenter: parent.horizontalCenter
    anchors.bottomMargin: 20
    color: "#888"
    font.pixelSize: 12
  }

  MouseArea {
    anchors.fill: parent
    onClicked: {
      count = count + 1
    }
  }
}

Click the window. Each click increments count. The rectangle's color expression re-evaluates, flipping between teal and red. The Text inside the box re-reads greeting and count and displays the updated string.

🛠️Let's Build It

Key property types shown here:

• color — accepts named colors ("white", "red"), hex codes ("#4ecdc4"), and Qt.rgba().
• Expression bindings — color: count % 2 === 0 ? "#4ecdc4" : "#ff6b6b" is not evaluated once. It re-evaluates every time count changes.
• Custom properties — property string greeting: "Hello!" and property int count: 0 are custom properties on the Window. They're accessible from any child via parent.parent.propertyName.

Let's Improve It

Custom properties can also be read-only:

property int count: 0
readonly property string label: "Clicks: " + count

Now label updates automatically when count changes, but you can't assign to label directly — it's computed from count by the binding. Use readonly for properties derived from other state.

Common built-in property types:

Rectangle {
  // Basic types
  property int integerValue: 42
  property real realValue: 3.14
  property string textValue: "hello"
  property bool booleanValue: true
  property color colorValue: "#ff0000"
  property url urlValue: "https://example.com"

  // Complex types
  property variant genericValue: [1, 2, 3]
  property font fontValue: Qt.font({ pixelSize: 14, bold: true })
  property rect rectValue: Qt.rect(0, 0, 100, 100)
  property point pointValue: Qt.point(50, 50)
  property size sizeValue: Qt.size(100, 100)
}

Under the Hood

Each property in QML is backed by a C++ Q_PROPERTY in the underlying Qt type. When you write color: "#ff6b6b", the QML engine calls QObject::setProperty("color", QColor("#ff6b6b")). For expression bindings, the engine creates a hidden QQmlBinding object that monitors all dependencies — when a dependency's NOTIFY signal fires, the binding re-evaluates and calls the appropriate setter.

Custom properties declared with property in QML create a new Q_PROPERTY on the fly, complete with a NOTIFY signal that other bindings can depend on.

⚠️Common Mistake

Using = instead of :. In QML, property assignment uses the colon syntax (property: value), not equals. Using = is a syntax error.

Treating properties as strings when they have specific types. color: "red" works because color accepts a string and converts it. But font.pixelSize: "16" will fail — pixelSize expects an int. Use unquoted numbers for numeric properties.

Exercises

⭐Exercise

Add a custom `color` property to the `Window` named `boxColor`. Set it to `"#45b7d1"`. Use it as the `Rectangle`'s default color instead of the ternary expression.

⭐⭐Exercise

Add a `readonly property string statusMessage` that combines `greeting` and `count` into a sentence like "Hello! You've clicked 5 times." Display it in a second `Text` element.

⭐⭐⭐Exercise

Create a `property variant colors: ["#ff6b6b", "#4ecdc4", "#ffe66d", "#45b7d1"]` and make clicking cycle through the array instead of flipping between two colors.

✅What You've Learned

• Properties are named, typed attributes that control object appearance and behavior
• Expression bindings re-evaluate automatically when dependencies change
• Custom properties use the property type name syntax
• readonly properties are computed from bindings and cannot be assigned directly