Is it possible to have a QListWidget select multiple setCurrentItems

Question

In PyQt I can have QListWidget select an item programmatically using QListWidget.setCurrentItem(item). And this, of course, will select an item for me inside my QListWidget.

However, I'm wondering if there exists a method like setCurrentItems([item1, item2, item3]) where if I give a list, it will select all the items in QListWidget that match those items.

Right now my current implementation only allows me to select one item. In this case, the item 'data2'

index = ['data', 'data1', 'data2']
for i in index:
    matching_items = listWidget.findItems(i, QtCore.Qt.MatchExactly)
    for item in matching_items:
        listWidget.setCurrentItem(item)

It would be cool if something like this could be done.

index = ['data', 'data1', 'data2']
for i in index:
    matching_items.append(listWidget.findItems(i, QtCore.Qt.MatchExactly))
listWidget.setCurrentItems(matching_items)

Answer 1

QListWidget by default supports a single selection, you must change the selection mode with setSelectionMode, in your case:

listWidget.setSelectionMode(QListWidget.MultiSelection)

If you want a QListWidgetItem to be selected you must use setSelected(True).

Example:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    listWidget = QListWidget()

    listWidget.addItems(["data{}".format(i) for i in range(10)])

    listWidget.setSelectionMode(QListWidget.MultiSelection)
    index = ['data2', 'data3', 'data5']
    for i in index:
        matching_items = listWidget.findItems(i, Qt.MatchExactly)
        for item in matching_items:
            item.setSelected(True)

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

Answer 2

In addition to eyllanesc's answer. You can also opt for:

listWidget.setSelectionMode(QtListWidget.ExtendedSelection)

This will let you hold the Ctrl key to toggle an item's selection on/off. In addition to that, you can also hold the Shift key to toggle the selection of all items between the current item and the clicked item.

If you only want the Shift key selection feature but not the Ctrl key selection toggle feature, you can use:

listWidget.setSelectionMode(QtListWidget.ExtendedSelection)