Getting Started

Once Slint is built, you can use it in your CMake application or library target in two steps:

1. Associate the .slint files that you’d like to use by calling the slint_target_sources cmake command. The first parameter is your application (or library) CMake target, and the parameters following are the names of the .slint files. This will result in the .slint files to be compiled into C++ source code.

2. The generated C++ source code also needs the Slint run-time library. This dependency is satisfied by linking Slint::Slint into your target with the target_link_libraries command.

A typical example looks like this:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.19)
project(my_application LANGUAGES CXX)

# Note: Use find_package(Slint) instead of the following three commands,
# if you prefer the package approach.
include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(
    Slint
    GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/slint-ui/slint.git
    GIT_TAG release/0.3
    SOURCE_SUBDIR api/cpp
)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(Slint)

add_executable(my_application main.cpp)
slint_target_sources(my_application my_application_ui.slint)
target_link_libraries(my_application PRIVATE Slint::Slint)
# On Windows, copy the Slint DLL next to the application binary so that it's found.
if (WIN32)
    add_custom_command(TARGET my_application POST_BUILD COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy $<TARGET_RUNTIME_DLLS:my_application> $<TARGET_FILE_DIR:my_application> COMMAND_EXPAND_LISTS)
endif()

Suppose my_application_ui.slint was a “Hello World” like this:

export component HelloWorld inherits Window {
    width: 400px;
    height: 400px;

    // Declare an alias that exposes the label's text property to C++
    property my_label <=> label.text;

    label := Text {
       y: parent.width / 2;
       x: parent.x + 200px;
       text: "Hello, world";
       color: blue;
    }
}

then you can use the following code in you main function to show the Window and change the text:

#include "my_application_ui.h"

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    auto hello_world = HelloWorld::create();
    hello_world->set_my_label("Hello from C++");
    // Show the window and spin the event loop until the window is closed.
    hello_world->run();
    return 0;
}

This works because the Slint compiler translated my_application_ui.slint to C++ code, in the my_application_ui.h header file. That generated code has a C++ class that corresponds to the HelloWorld element and has API to create the ui, read or write properties or set callbacks. You can learn more about how this API looks like in general in the Generated code section.

Tutorial

For an in-depth walk-through, you may be interested in reading our walk-through Slint Memory Game Tutorial Tutorial. It will guide you through the .slint mark-up language and the C++ API by building a little memory game.

Template

You can clone the Template Repository repository with the code of a minimal C++ application using Slint that can be used as a starting point to your program.