You can get user input with a QLineEdit widget. In this lesson you’ll make a line edit that changes a labels text when run.

A window can contain one or more QLineEdit widgets. They do not contain a label themselves, for UX purposes you may want to add a label to the QLineEdit to tell the user what to type in the box.

Related Course: Create GUI Apps with Python PyQt5

QLineEdit

Adding an input box

The object oriented code below creates a window with the constructor. An input box or line edit is added to the window, this is called a QLineEdit.

Then it adds a label and a line edit:

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self.lineEntry = QLineEdit(self)
self.lineEntry.move(16,16)
self.lineEntry.resize(200,40)

self.qlabel = QLabel(self)
self.qlabel.move(16,64)

You can connect every keypress in the input box (QLineEdit) with a method call.

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self.lineEntry.textChanged.connect(self.onChanged)

In that method set the labels text and adjust the labels size.

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def onChanged(self, text):
    self.qlabel.setText(text)
    self.qlabel.adjustSize()

pyqt text input qlineedit

Example

Copy and paste the example code below to try it yourself:

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import sys
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QMainWindow, QLabel, QLineEdit, QPushButton

class Example(QMainWindow):
    
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
                
        self.lineEntry = QLineEdit(self)
        self.lineEntry.move(16,16)
        self.lineEntry.resize(200,40)

        self.qlabel = QLabel(self)
        self.qlabel.move(16,64)

        self.lineEntry.textChanged.connect(self.onChanged)
        
        self.setGeometry(50,50,320,200)
        self.setWindowTitle("QLineEdit Example")
        self.show()

    def onChanged(self, text):
        self.qlabel.setText(text)
        self.qlabel.adjustSize()
        
if __name__ == '__main__':
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    ex = Example()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

If you are new to Python PyQt, then I highly recommend this book.

Download Examples