Target a function with QThread

Question

I'm aware of this structure

class MyThread(QThread):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
    
    def run():
       # do stuff

t = MyThread()
t.start()

With regular threading.Thread you can do something like this:

def stuff():
    # do stuff

t = threading.Thread(target=stuff)
t.start()

Any way to do this in pyqt5 with QThreads? Something like this:

t = Qthread(target=stuff)
t.start()

I tried that but I got this error:

TypeError: 'target' is an unknown keyword argument

Answer 1

You can add the function to a custom argument in the __init__, create an instance attribute for its reference and then run it in the run.

class MyThread(QThread):
    def __init__(self, target=None):
        super().__init__()
        self.target = target
    
    def run(self):
        if self.target:
            self.target()

def stuff():
    # do something

t = MyThread(target=stuff)
t.start()

Be aware that access to UI elements is not allowed in external threads, so don't use the threaded function to do anything related to UI: reading values and properties is unreliable, and writing can cause your program to crash.