QTimer::timeout isn't firing

Question

I am trying to create an event that gets fired off every n seconds in my Singleton worker. A signal/slot connection (with the signal being the QTimer timing out and the slot being a lambda function which makes a call to another Singleton class) is not working. The connect call is succeeding, the timer is active, and I get no QTimer complaints on the console. If I try to print QTimer's remaining time it reads -1. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why "timeout" is never being printed (indicating that the event is being triggered). Any help would be greatly appreciated. For simplicity's sake we can assume that OtherSingleton has the same structure. I should also note that this Singleton class object is running inside of a QThread.

Singleton.h:

#include <QObject>
#include <string>
#include <QTimer>
#include <QThread>

class Singleton : public QObject
{
   Q_OBJECT

public:
    static Singleton& get_instance();

    Singleton(Singleton const&) = delete;
    void operator=(Singleton const&) = delete;

    static void stop_client();

    static void start_client();

private:
    Singleton();

    static QTimer bytes_timer_;

};

Singleton.cpp:

#include "Singleton.h"
#include <QDebug>
#include <QTime>
#include <QFile>

Singleton::Singleton()
{
    bytes_timer_.setParent(this);
    bytes_timer_.moveToThread(QThread::currentThread());
    bytes_timer_.setInterval(1000);
    qDebug() << "Timeout success:" << connect(&bytes_timer_, &QTimer::timeout, this, [&]() {
        qDebug() << "timeout";
        // . . .
    }, Qt::DirectConnection);
}

Singleton& Singleton::get_instance() {
    static Singleton instance; 

    return instance;
}

void Singleton::start_client() {
    bytes_timer_.start();
}

void Singleton::stop_client() {
     bytes_timer_.stop();
}

QTimer Singleton::bytes_timer_;

MainWindow.h:

#ifndef MAINWINDOW_H
#define MAINWINDOW_H

#include <QMainWindow>
#include <QThread>
#include "singleton.h"

namespace Ui {
class MainWindow;
}

class MainWindow : public QMainWindow
{
    Q_OBJECT

public:
    explicit MainWindow(QWidget *parent = nullptr);
    ~MainWindow();

private slots:
    void on_pushButton_clicked();

private:
    QThread thread;
    Singleton *s;
    Ui::MainWindow *ui;
};

#endif // MAINWINDOW_H

MainWindow.cpp:

#include "mainwindow.h"
#include "ui_mainwindow.h"

MainWindow::MainWindow(QWidget *parent) :
    QMainWindow(parent),
    ui(new Ui::MainWindow)
{
    ui->setupUi(this);
    s = &Singleton::get_instance();
    s->moveToThread(&thread);
}

MainWindow::~MainWindow()
{
    delete ui;
}

void MainWindow::on_pushButton_clicked()
{
    thread.start();
    s->start_client();
}

main.cpp:

#include "mainwindow.h"
#include <QApplication>
#include <QThread>
#include "singleton.h"

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    QApplication a(argc, argv);
    MainWindow w;
    w.show();

    return a.exec();
}

Answer 1

I somehow have the feeling that OP is about to “over-engineer” what could be actually quite simple.

I made an MCVE to demonstrate this.

testQTimerStartStop.cc:

#include <QtWidgets>

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
  qDebug() << "Qt Version:" << QT_VERSION_STR;
  // prepare application
  QApplication app(argc, argv);
  QTimer qTimer;
  qTimer.setInterval(1000);
  // setup GUI
  QWidget qWinMain;
  qWinMain.setWindowTitle(QString::fromUtf8("QTimer Test"));
  QFormLayout qForm;
  QSpinBox qEditTimer;
  qEditTimer.setRange(0, 30);
  qForm.addRow(
    QString::fromUtf8("Count down:"),
    &qEditTimer);
  QPushButton qBtnStart(QString::fromUtf8("Start"));
  qForm.addRow(&qBtnStart);
  QPushButton qBtnStop(QString::fromUtf8("Stop"));
  qForm.addRow(&qBtnStop);
  qWinMain.setLayout(&qForm);
  qWinMain.show();
  // set initial states
  qEditTimer.setValue(10);
  auto updateBtns = [&]() {
    const int count = qEditTimer.value();
    qBtnStart.setEnabled(!qTimer.isActive() && count > 0);
    qBtnStop.setEnabled(qTimer.isActive());
  };
  updateBtns();
  // install signal handlers
  QObject::connect(&qTimer, &QTimer::timeout,
    [&]() {
      qEditTimer.setValue(qEditTimer.value() - 1); // count down
    });
  QObject::connect(&qEditTimer, (void (QSpinBox::*)(int))&QSpinBox::valueChanged,
    [&](int count) {
      if (count <= 0) qTimer.stop();
      updateBtns();
    });
  QObject::connect(&qBtnStart, &QPushButton::clicked,
    [&](bool) { qTimer.start(); updateBtns(); });
  QObject::connect(&qBtnStop, &QPushButton::clicked,
    [&](bool) { qTimer.stop(); updateBtns(); });
  // runtime loop
  return app.exec();
}

testQTimerStartStop.pro:

SOURCES = testQTimerStartStop.cc

QT += widgets

Build and run:

$ qmake-qt5 testQTimerStartStop.pro

$ make && ./testQTimerStartStop
g++ -c -fno-keep-inline-dllexport -D_GNU_SOURCE -pipe -O2 -Wall -W -D_REENTRANT -DQT_NO_DEBUG -DQT_WIDGETS_LIB -DQT_GUI_LIB -DQT_CORE_LIB -I. -isystem /usr/include/qt5 -isystem /usr/include/qt5/QtWidgets -isystem /usr/include/qt5/QtGui -isystem /usr/include/qt5/QtCore -I. -I/usr/lib/qt5/mkspecs/cygwin-g++ -o testQTimerStartStop.o testQTimerStartStop.cc
g++  -o testQTimerStartStop.exe testQTimerStartStop.o   -lQt5Widgets -lQt5Gui -lQt5Core -lGL -lpthread 
Qt Version: 5.9.4

Moving the QTimer to a different thread would add a lot of overhead. Any access to the QTimer had

• to happen before starting the thread or
• to be mutex guarded or
• to be done through signals (with Qt::QueueConnection).

I considered it for a moment to adapt my sample respectivley but soon realized the necessary effort and stopped. IMHO, I wouldn't recommend this unless there is a good reason to do so.

Please, consider that: An application which is under heavy load which causes significant delays of timeout signal emitting is probably not able as well to handle timeout events which are emitted by another thread in time.

Answer 2

as documented in the official site, you need to start the timer

bytes_timer_.start();

https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtimer.html#start-1