Console output in a Qt GUI app?

I have a Qt GUI application running on Windows that allows command-line options to be passed and under some circumstances I want to output a message to the console and then quit, for example:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  QApplication a(argc, argv);

  if (someCommandLineParam)
  {
    std::cout << "Hello, world!";
    return 0;
  }

  MainWindow w;
  w.show();

  return a.exec();
}

However, the console messages do not appear when I run the app from a command-prompt. Does anyone know how I can get this to work?

Windows does not really support dual mode applications.

To see console output you need to create a console application

CONFIG += console

However, if you double click on the program to start the GUI mode version then you will get a console window appearing, which is probably not what you want. To prevent the console window appearing you have to create a GUI mode application in which case you get no output in the console.

One idea may be to create a second small application which is a console application and provides the output. This can call the second one to do the work.

Or you could put all the functionality in a DLL then create two versions of the .exe file which have very simple main functions which call into the DLL. One is for the GUI and one is for the console.

Add:

#ifdef _WIN32
if (AttachConsole(ATTACH_PARENT_PROCESS)) {
    freopen("CONOUT$", "w", stdout);
    freopen("CONOUT$", "w", stderr);
}
#endif

at the top of main(). This will enable output to the console only if the program is started in a console, and won't pop up a console window in other situations. If you want to create a console window to display messages when you run the app outside a console you can change the condition to:

if (AttachConsole(ATTACH_PARENT_PROCESS) || AllocConsole())

void Console()
{
    AllocConsole();
    FILE *pFileCon = NULL;
    pFileCon = freopen("CONOUT$", "w", stdout);

    COORD coordInfo;
    coordInfo.X = 130;
    coordInfo.Y = 9000;

    SetConsoleScreenBufferSize(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), coordInfo);
    SetConsoleMode(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE),ENABLE_QUICK_EDIT_MODE| ENABLE_EXTENDED_FLAGS);
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    Console();
    std::cout<<"start@@";
    qDebug()<<"start!";

You can't use std::cout as others have said,my way is perfect even for some code can't include "qdebug" !

So many answers to this topic. 0.0

So I tried it with Qt5.x from Win7 to Win10. It took me some hours to have a good working solution which doesn't produce any problems somewhere in the chain:

#include "mainwindow.h"

#include <QApplication>

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <iostream>

//
// Add to project file:
// CONFIG += console
//

int main( int argc, char *argv[] )
{
    if( argc < 2 )
    {
    #if defined( Q_OS_WIN )
        ::ShowWindow( ::GetConsoleWindow(), SW_HIDE ); //hide console window
    #endif
        QApplication a( argc, argv );
        MainWindow *w = new MainWindow;
        w->show();
        int e = a.exec();
        delete w; //needed to execute deconstructor
        exit( e ); //needed to exit the hidden console
        return e;
    }
    else
    {
        QCoreApplication a( argc, argv );
        std::string g;
        std::cout << "Enter name: ";
        std::cin >> g;
        std::cout << "Name is: " << g << std::endl;
        exit( 0 );
        return a.exec();
    }
}

---

---

I tried it also without the "CONFIG += console", but then you need to redirect the streams and create the console on your own:

#ifdef _WIN32
if (AttachConsole(ATTACH_PARENT_PROCESS) || AllocConsole()){
    freopen("CONOUT$", "w", stdout);
    freopen("CONOUT$", "w", stderr);
    freopen("CONIN$", "r", stdin);
}
#endif

BUT this only works if you start it through a debugger, otherwise all inputs are directed towards the system too. Means, if you type a name via std::cin the system tries to execute the name as a command. (very strange)

Two other warnings to this attempt would be, that you can't use ::FreeConsole() it won't close it and if you start it through a console the app won't close.

---

---

Last there is a Qt help section in QApplication to this topic. I tried the example there with an application and it doesn't work for the GUI, it stucked somewhere in an endless loop and the GUI won't be rendered or it simply crashes:

QCoreApplication* createApplication(int &argc, char *argv[])
{
    for (int i = 1; i < argc; ++i)
        if (!qstrcmp(argv[i], "-no-gui"))
            return new QCoreApplication(argc, argv);
    return new QApplication(argc, argv);
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    QScopedPointer<QCoreApplication> app(createApplication(argc, argv));

    if (qobject_cast<QApplication *>(app.data())) {
       // start GUI version...
    } else {
       // start non-GUI version...
    }

    return app->exec();
}

---

---

So if you are using Windows and Qt simply use the console option, hide the console if you need the GUI and close it via exit.

No way to output a message to console when using QT += gui.

fprintf(stderr, ...) also can't print output.

Use QMessageBox instead to show the message.

Oh you can Output a message when using QT += gui and CONFIG += console.

You need printf("foo bar") but cout << "foo bar" doesn't works

Something you may want to investigate, at least for windows, is the AllocConsole() function in the windows api. It calls GetStdHandle a few times to redirect stdout, stderr, etc. (A quick test shows this doesn't entirely do what we want it to do. You do get a console window opened alongside your other Qt stuff, but you can't output to it. Presumably, because the console window is open, there is some way to access it, get a handle to it, or access and manipulate it somehow. Here's the MSDN documentation for those interested in figuring this out:

AllocConsole(): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms681944%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

GetStdHandle(...): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms683231%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

(I'd add this as a comment, but the rules prevent me from doing so...)

I used this header below for my projects. Hope it helps.

#ifndef __DEBUG__H
#define __DEBUG__H

#include <QtGui>    

static void myMessageOutput(bool debug, QtMsgType type, const QString & msg) {

	if (!debug) return;

	QDateTime dateTime = QDateTime::currentDateTime();
	QString dateString = dateTime.toString("yyyy.MM.dd hh:mm:ss:zzz");

	switch (type) {

		case QtDebugMsg:
			fprintf(stderr, "Debug: %s\n", msg.toAscii().data());
			break;
		case QtWarningMsg:
			fprintf(stderr, "Warning: %s\n", msg.toAscii().data());
			break;
		case QtCriticalMsg:
			fprintf(stderr, "Critical: %s\n", msg.toAscii().data());
			break;
		case QtFatalMsg:
			fprintf(stderr, "Fatal: %s\n", msg.toAscii().data());
			abort();
	}
}

#endif

PS: you could add dateString to output if you want in future.

First of all, why would you need to output to console in a release mode build? Nobody will think to look there when there's a gui...

Second, qDebug is fancy :)

Third, you can try adding console to your .pro's CONFIG, it might work.

In your .pro add

CONFIG          += console

It may have been an oversight of other answers, or perhaps it is a requirement of the user to indeed need console output, but the obvious answer to me is to create a secondary window that can be shown or hidden (with a checkbox or button) that shows all messages by appending lines of text to a text box widget and use that as a console?

The benefits of such a solution are:

• A simple solution (providing all it displays is a simple log).
• The ability to dock the 'console' widget onto the main application window. (In Qt, anyhow).
• The ability to create many consoles (if more than 1 thread, etc).
• A pretty easy change from local console output to sending log over network to a client.

Hope this gives you food for thought, although I am not in any way yet qualified to postulate on how you should do this, I can imagine it is something very achievable by any one of us with a little searching / reading!

Make sure Qt5Core.dll is in the same directory with your application executable.

I had a similar issue in Qt5 with a console application: if I start the application from Qt Creator, the output text is visible, if I open cmd.exe and start the same application there, no output is visible. Very strange!

I solved it by copying Qt5Core.dll to the directory with the application executable.

Here is my tiny console application:

#include <QCoreApplication>
#include <QDebug>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    int x=343;
    QString str("Hello World");
    qDebug()<< str << x<<"lalalaa";

    QTextStream out(stdout);
    out << "aldfjals alsdfajs...";
}

I also played with this, discovering that redirecting output worked, but I never saw output to the console window, which is present for every windows application. This is my solution so far, until I find a Qt replacement for ShowWindow and GetConsoleWindow.

Run this from a command prompt without parameters - get the window. Run from command prompt with parameters (eg. cmd aaa bbb ccc) - you get the text output on the command prompt window - just as you would expect for any Windows console app.

Please excuse the lame example - it represents about 30 minutes of tinkering.

#include "mainwindow.h"
#include <QTextStream>
#include <QCoreApplication>
#include <QApplication>
#include <QWidget>
#include <windows.h>

QT_USE_NAMESPACE

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    if (argc > 1)   {
        // User has specified command-line arguments
        QCoreApplication a(argc, argv);
        QTextStream  out(stdout);
        int     i;

        ShowWindow (GetConsoleWindow(),SW_NORMAL);
        for (i=1; i<argc; i++)
             out << i << ':' << argv [i] << endl;
        out << endl << "Hello, World" << endl;
        out << "Application Directory Path:" << a.applicationDirPath() << endl;
        out << "Application File Path:" << a.applicationFilePath() << endl;
        MessageBox (0,(LPCWSTR)"Continue?",(LPCWSTR)"Silly Question",MB_YESNO);
        return 0;
    } else  {
        QApplication a(argc, argv);
        MainWindow w;

        w.setWindowTitle("Simple example");
        w.show();
        return a.exec();
    }
}

After a rather long struggle with exactly the same problem I found that simply

CONFIG   += console

really does the trick. It won't work until you explicitly tell QtCreator to execute qmake on the project (right click on project) AND change something inside the source file, then rebuild. Otherwise compilation is skipped and you still won't see the output on the command line. Now my program works in both GUI and cmd line mode.

One solution is to run powershell and redirect the output to whatever stream you want.

Below is an example of running powershell from cmd.exe and redirecting my_exec.exe output to both the console and an output.txt file:

powershell ".\my_exec.exe | tee output.txt"

Easy

Step1: Create new project. Go File->New File or Project --> Other Project -->Empty Project

Step2: Use the below code.

In .pro file

QT +=widgets
CONFIG += console
TARGET = minimal
SOURCES += \ main.cpp

Step3: Create main.cpp and copy the below code.

#include <QApplication>
#include <QtCore>

using namespace  std;

QTextStream in(stdin);
QTextStream out(stdout);

int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
QApplication app(argc,argv);
qDebug() << "Please enter some text over here: " << endl;
out.flush();
QString input;
input = in.readLine();
out << "The input is " << input  << endl;
return app.exec();
}

I created necessary objects in the code for your understanding.

Just Run It

If you want your program to get multiple inputs with some conditions. Then past the below code in Main.cpp

#include <QApplication>
#include <QtCore>

using namespace  std;

QTextStream in(stdin);
QTextStream out(stdout);

int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
    QApplication app(argc,argv);
    qDebug() << "Please enter some text over here: " << endl;
    out.flush();
    QString input;
    do{
        input = in.readLine();
        if(input.size()==6){
            out << "The input is " << input  << endl;   
        }
        else
        {
            qDebug("Not the exact input man");
        }
    }while(!input.size()==0);
    
    qDebug(" WE ARE AT THE END");
    
    // endif
    return app.exec();
} // end main

Hope it educates you.

Good day,

First of all you can try flushing the buffer

std::cout << "Hello, world!"<<std::endl;

For more Qt based logging you can try using qDebug.