How to delete a QGraphicsItem in Pyqt5

I am trying to find out how to delete a QGraphicsItem using python. Currently, I am using scene.removeItem(item) to remove the item from a QGraphicsScene. However, does that delete the item as well (from memory)?

If not, is there a way to do so? Will the del keyword accomplish this? Sorry, I'm fairly new to this so I would appreciate any advice/feedback.

Solution

When adding an item to the scene the one that manages the memory of the item is no longer python but the scene but when you use removeItem() does not remove it from memory but returns ownership of the item to python, and in that case python remove it when deemed necessary, to verify I have created a simple example:

from PyQt5 import QtCore, QtWidgets


class GraphicsRectItem(QtWidgets.QGraphicsRectItem):
    def __del__(self):
        print("deleted")


class MainWindow(QtWidgets.QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self, parent=None):
        super().__init__(parent=parent)

        self.scene = QtWidgets.QGraphicsScene()
        self.view = QtWidgets.QGraphicsView(self.scene)
        self.setCentralWidget(self.view)

        item = GraphicsRectItem(10, 10, 100, 100)
        self.scene.addItem(item)

        QtCore.QTimer.singleShot(1000, lambda: self.scene.removeItem(item))


def main():
    import sys

    app = QtWidgets.QApplication(sys.argv)

    mytable = MainWindow()
    mytable.show()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

If you want to explicitly remove from memory the C++ object (not the python object) then you can use sip:

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QGraphicsScene
# sip should be imported after pyqt5
import sip
# ...
scene.removeItem(item)
sip.delete(item)