Creating a simple message dialog

Message dialogs pop up to grab the user's attention and to display important information. In this recipe, we'll create a simple information dialog.

Getting ready

Open the QGIS Python Console by going to the Plugins menu and selecting Python Console.

How to do it...

We will create a message dialog and display some text in it, as follows:

1. First, we need to import the GUI library:

   from PyQt4.QtGui import *
   

2. Then, we'll create the message dialog:

   msg = QMessageBox()
   

3. Next, we'll set the message we want to display:

   msg.setText("This is a simple information message.")
   

4. Finally, we call the execution method to display the message dialog:

   msg.show()
   

How it works...

Note that we are directly using the underlying Qt framework from which QGIS is built. QGIS API's objects begin with Qgs, while Qt objects begin with just the letter Q.

There's more…

A message dialog box should also be used sparingly because it is a popup that can become...