Comprehensive Guide to PyQt5 GUI Development, Installation, and Packaging

Common GUI Frameworks

Python offers several GUI libraries, including PyQt5 (Qt bindings), Pyside6 (official Qt Python bindings), Tkinter (built‑in), PySimpleGUI (wrapper around Tkinter), WxPython, Wax, Kivy, BeeWare, Toga, Eel, Flexx, pywebview, and enaml. The author plans to start with PyQt5 due to its abundant resources.

PyQt5 Introduction

PyQt is the Python implementation of the Qt framework, providing a powerful set of widgets that closely mirror Qt's API. It is available under GPL and commercial licenses, and includes modules such as QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets, QtMultimedia, QtBluetooth, QtNetwork, QtPositioning, QtWebSockets, QtWebKit, QtXml, QtSvg, QtSql, and QtTest.

PyQt5 Installation

The author uses Python 3.6.8, PyCharm, and PyQt5. Installation commands:

pip install pyqt5

pip install pyqt5-tools

If a dependency conflict occurs (e.g., qt5-tools 5.15.2.1.2 has requirement click~=7.0 ), resolve it with:

pip install click~=7.0

Qt Designer Configuration

Qt Designer is used for drag‑and‑drop UI design. The layout includes a Widget Box, MainWindow canvas, Object Inspector, Property Editor, and Resource Browser. The generated .ui file is XML and can be converted to Python with pyuic5 .

PyQt5 Usage Example

A minimal window example:

import sys

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QMainWindow, QLabel

app = QApplication(sys.argv)

win = QMainWindow()
win.setGeometry(400, 400, 400, 300)
win.setWindowTitle("Pyqt5 Tutorial")
win.show()

sys.exit(app.exec_())

Common widgets such as QLabel, QComboBox, QCheckBox, QRadioButton, QPushButton, QTableWidget, QLineEdit, QSlider, and QProgressBar are displayed.

Button and Event Handling

import sys

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QMainWindow, QPushButton

def click():
    print("Hy Button is clicked!")

app = QApplication(sys.argv)
win = QMainWindow()
win.setGeometry(400, 400, 400, 300)
win.setWindowTitle("Pyqt5 Tutorial")

button = QPushButton(win)
button.resize(200, 100)
button.setText("Hi! Click Me")
button.move(100, 100)
button.clicked.connect(click)

win.show()
sys.exit(app.exec_())

Practical Project – Simple Weather Query App

The UI is designed with Qt Designer (Weather.ui) containing a ComboBox for city selection, a TextEdit for output, and Query/Clear buttons. The UI is converted to Python with pyuic5 and integrated into a MainDialog class that fetches weather data via the AMap API.

import sys
import Weather
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QDialog
import requests

class MainDialog(QDialog):
    def __init__(self, parent=None):
        super(QDialog, self).__init__(parent)
        self.ui = Weather.Ui_Dialog()
        self.ui.setupUi(self)
    def queryWeather(self):
        cityName = self.ui.comboBox.currentText()
        cityCode = self.getCode(cityName)
        r = requests.get("https://restapi.amap.com/v3/weather/weatherInfo?key=f4fd5b287b6d7d51a3c60fee24e42002&city={}".format(cityCode))
        if r.status_code == 200:
            data = r.json()['lives'][0]
            weatherMsg = '城市：{}\n天气：{}\n温度：{}\n风向：{}\n风力：{}\n湿度：{}\n发布时间：{}\n'.format(
                data['city'], data['weather'], data['temperature'], data['winddirection'], data['windpower'], data['humidity'], data['reporttime'])
        else:
            weatherMsg = '天气查询失败，请稍后再试！'
        self.ui.textEdit.setText(weatherMsg)
    def getCode(self, cityName):
        cityDict = {"北京": "110000", "苏州": "320500", "上海": "310000"}
        return cityDict.get(cityName, '101010100')
    def clearText(self):
        self.ui.textEdit.clear()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    myapp = QApplication(sys.argv)
    myDlg = MainDialog()
    myDlg.show()
    sys.exit(myapp.exec_())

Packaging the Application

Python freezing tools such as py2exe, PyInstaller, and fbs can create executables. The author chooses fbs (built on PyInstaller) for its convenience.

pip install fbs

fbs startproject
# follow prompts to set project name, etc.

# move demo.py and Weather.py into src/main/python, rename demo.py to main.py, add:
from fbs_runtime.application_context.PyQt5 import ApplicationContext

fbs freeze

The resulting executable is placed in \target\MyApp .

References

Links to the official documentation of PyQt5, Qt, Pyside6, Tkinter, PySimpleGUI, WxPython, Wax, Kivy, BeeWare, Toga, Eel, Flexx, pywebview, enaml, and fbs are provided.