Clickable hyperlink in QTextEdit

Question

I want to use QTextEdit (in read-only mode) to show a clickable hyperlink, I used to do

QTextEdit *textEdit = new QTextEdit;
QTextCursor cursor(textEdit->document());
textEdit->setTextCursor(cursor);
cursor->insertHtml("<a href=\"www.google.com\" >Google</a>");
textEdit->show();

this code will show Google as hyperlink but unable to click.
And if I used

QTextEdit *textEdit = new QTextEdit;
QTextCursor cursor(textEdit->document());
textEdit->setTextCursor(cursor);
QTextCharFormat linkFormat = cursor.charFormat();
linkFormat.setAnchor(true);
linkFormat.setAnchorHref("http://www.google.com");
linkFormat.setAnchorName("Google");
cursor.insertText("Google", linkFormat);

then nothing happen. "Google" is just normal text.

Please help me insert clickable hyperlink to QTextEdit.

Answer 1

Using QTextBrowser is simpler (as suggested by another answer). However, if for some reason you want to use QTextEdit, try to change the text interaction flags using setTextInteractionFlags(). I think you have to enable the Qt::LinksAccessibleByMouse flag.

See Qt::TextInteractionFlag and QTextEdit::textInteractionFlags

Answer 2

To have clickable hyperlink in QTextEdit, you can use

1. QTextCharFormat::setAnchorHref to set the link for some text

2. QWidget::mousePressEvent to capture mouse press event

3. QTextEdit::anchorAt to obtain the link

Here's the minimal working PyQt example,

import sys
from PyQt5.Qt import QDesktopServices, QUrl, QApplication, QColor, Qt
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QTextEdit


class MyWidget(QTextEdit):

    def mousePressEvent(self, e):
        self.anchor = self.anchorAt(e.pos())
        if self.anchor:
            QApplication.setOverrideCursor(Qt.PointingHandCursor)

    def mouseReleaseEvent(self, e):
        if self.anchor:
            QDesktopServices.openUrl(QUrl(self.anchor))
            QApplication.setOverrideCursor(Qt.ArrowCursor)
            self.anchor = None


app = QApplication(sys.argv)
editor = MyWidget()
cursor = editor.textCursor()
fmt = cursor.charFormat()
fmt.setForeground(QColor('blue'))
address = 'http://example.com'
fmt.setAnchor(True)
fmt.setAnchorHref(address)
fmt.setToolTip(address)
cursor.insertText("Hello world again", fmt)
editor.show()
app.exec_()

Answer 3

As far as I've tried, when using QTextEdit + Qt::LinksAccessibleByMouse I'm able to click on links, but no action is taken (i.e., link is not open). The only action possible is to right-click on the link and select Copy Link Location.

As mentioned, one option is using QTextBrowser. In this case you have to set the QTextBrowser::openExternalLinks property too, in order to open the link using the default browser, otherwise it will be open in the text-browser widget.

Another option, given you have a read-only text, is to use a QLabel with rich format, and using the QLabel::linkActivated signal to open the URL

label->setTextFormat(Qt::RichText);
QObject::connect(label, &QLabel::linkActivated, [](const QString & link) {
  QDesktopServices::openUrl(link);
});

Answer 4

You can use QTextBrowser instead of QTextEdit if it read only text.