Background thread with QThread in PyQt

I have a program which interfaces with a radio I am using via a gui I wrote in PyQt. Obviously one of the main functions of the radio is to transmit data, but to do this continuously, I have to loop the writes, which causes the gui to hang. Since I have never dealt with threading, I tried to get rid of these hangs using QCoreApplication.processEvents(). The radio needs to sleep between transmissions, though, so the gui still hangs based on how long these sleeps last.

Is there a simple way to fix this using QThread? I have looked for tutorials on how to implement multithreading with PyQt, but most of them deal with setting up servers and are much more advanced than I need them to be. I honestly don't even really need my thread to update anything while it is running, I just need to start it, have it transmit in the background, and stop it.

I created a little example that shows 3 different and simple ways of dealing with threads. I hope it will help you find the right approach to your problem.

import sys
import time

from PyQt5.QtCore import (QCoreApplication, QObject, QRunnable, QThread,
                          QThreadPool, pyqtSignal)


# Subclassing QThread
# http://qt-project.org/doc/latest/qthread.html
class AThread(QThread):

    def run(self):
        count = 0
        while count < 5:
            time.sleep(1)
            print("A Increasing")
            count += 1

# Subclassing QObject and using moveToThread
# http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2007/07/05/qthreads-no-longer-abstract
class SomeObject(QObject):

    finished = pyqtSignal()

    def long_running(self):
        count = 0
        while count < 5:
            time.sleep(1)
            print("B Increasing")
            count += 1
        self.finished.emit()

# Using a QRunnable
# http://qt-project.org/doc/latest/qthreadpool.html
# Note that a QRunnable isn't a subclass of QObject and therefore does
# not provide signals and slots.
class Runnable(QRunnable):

    def run(self):
        count = 0
        app = QCoreApplication.instance()
        while count < 5:
            print("C Increasing")
            time.sleep(1)
            count += 1
        app.quit()


def using_q_thread():
    app = QCoreApplication([])
    thread = AThread()
    thread.finished.connect(app.exit)
    thread.start()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

def using_move_to_thread():
    app = QCoreApplication([])
    objThread = QThread()
    obj = SomeObject()
    obj.moveToThread(objThread)
    obj.finished.connect(objThread.quit)
    objThread.started.connect(obj.long_running)
    objThread.finished.connect(app.exit)
    objThread.start()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

def using_q_runnable():
    app = QCoreApplication([])
    runnable = Runnable()
    QThreadPool.globalInstance().start(runnable)
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

if __name__ == "__main__":
    #using_q_thread()
    #using_move_to_thread()
    using_q_runnable()

Take this answer updated for PyQt5, python 3.4

Use this as a pattern to start a worker that does not take data and return data as they are available to the form.

1 - Worker class is made smaller and put in its own file worker.py for easy memorization and independent software reuse.

2 - The main.py file is the file that defines the GUI Form class

3 - The thread object is not subclassed.

4 - Both thread object and the worker object belong to the Form object

5 - Steps of the procedure are within the comments.

# worker.py
from PyQt5.QtCore import QThread, QObject, pyqtSignal, pyqtSlot
import time


class Worker(QObject):
    finished = pyqtSignal()
    intReady = pyqtSignal(int)


    @pyqtSlot()
    def procCounter(self): # A slot takes no params
        for i in range(1, 100):
            time.sleep(1)
            self.intReady.emit(i)

        self.finished.emit()

And the main file is:

  # main.py
  from PyQt5.QtCore import QThread
  from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QLabel, QWidget, QGridLayout
  import sys
  import worker


  class Form(QWidget):

    def __init__(self):
       super().__init__()
       self.label = QLabel("0")

       # 1 - create Worker and Thread inside the Form
       self.obj = worker.Worker()  # no parent!
       self.thread = QThread()  # no parent!

       # 2 - Connect Worker`s Signals to Form method slots to post data.
       self.obj.intReady.connect(self.onIntReady)

       # 3 - Move the Worker object to the Thread object
       self.obj.moveToThread(self.thread)

       # 4 - Connect Worker Signals to the Thread slots
       self.obj.finished.connect(self.thread.quit)

       # 5 - Connect Thread started signal to Worker operational slot method
       self.thread.started.connect(self.obj.procCounter)

       # * - Thread finished signal will close the app if you want!
       #self.thread.finished.connect(app.exit)

       # 6 - Start the thread
       self.thread.start()

       # 7 - Start the form
       self.initUI()


    def initUI(self):
        grid = QGridLayout()
        self.setLayout(grid)
        grid.addWidget(self.label,0,0)

        self.move(300, 150)
        self.setWindowTitle('thread test')
        self.show()

    def onIntReady(self, i):
        self.label.setText("{}".format(i))
        #print(i)

    app = QApplication(sys.argv)

    form = Form()

    sys.exit(app.exec_())

Very nice example from Matt, I fixed the typo and also pyqt4.8 is common now so I removed the dummy class as well and added an example for the dataReady signal

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import sys
from PyQt4 import QtCore, QtGui
from PyQt4.QtCore import Qt


# very testable class (hint: you can use mock.Mock for the signals)
class Worker(QtCore.QObject):
    finished = QtCore.pyqtSignal()
    dataReady = QtCore.pyqtSignal(list, dict)

    @QtCore.pyqtSlot()
    def processA(self):
        print "Worker.processA()"
        self.finished.emit()

    @QtCore.pyqtSlot(str, list, list)
    def processB(self, foo, bar=None, baz=None):
        print "Worker.processB()"
        for thing in bar:
            # lots of processing...
            self.dataReady.emit(['dummy', 'data'], {'dummy': ['data']})
        self.finished.emit()


def onDataReady(aList, aDict):
    print 'onDataReady'
    print repr(aList)
    print repr(aDict)


app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)

thread = QtCore.QThread()  # no parent!
obj = Worker()  # no parent!
obj.dataReady.connect(onDataReady)

obj.moveToThread(thread)

# if you want the thread to stop after the worker is done
# you can always call thread.start() again later
obj.finished.connect(thread.quit)

# one way to do it is to start processing as soon as the thread starts
# this is okay in some cases... but makes it harder to send data to
# the worker object from the main gui thread.  As you can see I'm calling
# processA() which takes no arguments
thread.started.connect(obj.processA)
thread.finished.connect(app.exit)

thread.start()

# another way to do it, which is a bit fancier, allows you to talk back and
# forth with the object in a thread safe way by communicating through signals
# and slots (now that the thread is running I can start calling methods on
# the worker object)
QtCore.QMetaObject.invokeMethod(obj, 'processB', Qt.QueuedConnection,
                                QtCore.Q_ARG(str, "Hello World!"),
                                QtCore.Q_ARG(list, ["args", 0, 1]),
                                QtCore.Q_ARG(list, []))

# that looks a bit scary, but its a totally ok thing to do in Qt,
# we're simply using the system that Signals and Slots are built on top of,
# the QMetaObject, to make it act like we safely emitted a signal for
# the worker thread to pick up when its event loop resumes (so if its doing
# a bunch of work you can call this method 10 times and it will just queue
# up the calls.  Note: PyQt > 4.6 will not allow you to pass in a None
# instead of an empty list, it has stricter type checking

app.exec_()

According to the Qt developers, subclassing QThread is incorrect (see http://blog.qt.io/blog/2010/06/17/youre-doing-it-wrong/). But that article is really hard to understand (plus the title is a bit condescending). I found a better blog post that gives a more detailed explanation about why you should use one style of threading over another: http://mayaposch.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/how-to-really-truly-use-qthreads-the-full-explanation/

In my opinion, you should probably never subclass thread with the intent to overload the run method. While that does work, you're basically circumventing how Qt wants you to work. Plus you'll miss out on things like events and proper thread safe signals and slots. Plus as you'll likely see in the above blog post, the "correct" way of threading forces you to write more testable code.

Here's a couple of examples of how to take advantage of QThreads in PyQt (I posted a separate answer below that properly uses QRunnable and incorporates signals/slots, that answer is better if you have a lot of async tasks that you need to load balance).

import sys
from PyQt4 import QtCore
from PyQt4 import QtGui
from PyQt4.QtCore import Qt

# very testable class (hint: you can use mock.Mock for the signals)
class Worker(QtCore.QObject):
    finished = QtCore.pyqtSignal()
    dataReady = QtCore.pyqtSignal(list, dict)

    @QtCore.pyqtSlot()
    def processA(self):
        print "Worker.processA()"
        self.finished.emit()

    @QtCore.pyqtSlot(str, list, list)
    def processB(self, foo, bar=None, baz=None):
        print "Worker.processB()"
        for thing in bar:
            # lots of processing...
            self.dataReady.emit(['dummy', 'data'], {'dummy': ['data']})
        self.finished.emit()


class Thread(QtCore.QThread):
    """Need for PyQt4 <= 4.6 only"""
    def __init__(self, parent=None):
        QtCore.QThread.__init__(self, parent)

     # this class is solely needed for these two methods, there
     # appears to be a bug in PyQt 4.6 that requires you to
     # explicitly call run and start from the subclass in order
     # to get the thread to actually start an event loop

    def start(self):
        QtCore.QThread.start(self)

    def run(self):
        QtCore.QThread.run(self)


app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)

thread = Thread() # no parent!
obj = Worker() # no parent!
obj.moveToThread(thread)

# if you want the thread to stop after the worker is done
# you can always call thread.start() again later
obj.finished.connect(thread.quit)

# one way to do it is to start processing as soon as the thread starts
# this is okay in some cases... but makes it harder to send data to
# the worker object from the main gui thread.  As you can see I'm calling
# processA() which takes no arguments
thread.started.connect(obj.processA)
thread.start()

# another way to do it, which is a bit fancier, allows you to talk back and
# forth with the object in a thread safe way by communicating through signals
# and slots (now that the thread is running I can start calling methods on
# the worker object)
QtCore.QMetaObject.invokeMethod(obj, 'processB', Qt.QueuedConnection,
                                QtCore.Q_ARG(str, "Hello World!"),
                                QtCore.Q_ARG(list, ["args", 0, 1]),
                                QtCore.Q_ARG(list, []))

# that looks a bit scary, but its a totally ok thing to do in Qt,
# we're simply using the system that Signals and Slots are built on top of,
# the QMetaObject, to make it act like we safely emitted a signal for 
# the worker thread to pick up when its event loop resumes (so if its doing
# a bunch of work you can call this method 10 times and it will just queue
# up the calls.  Note: PyQt > 4.6 will not allow you to pass in a None
# instead of an empty list, it has stricter type checking

app.exec_()

# Without this you may get weird QThread messages in the shell on exit
app.deleteLater()