Class ObjectClass

All properties should be installed during the class initializer. It is possible to install properties after that, but doing so is not recommend, and specifically, is not guaranteed to be thread-safe vs. use of properties on the same type on other threads.

The property id of each property is the index of each #GParamSpec in the pspecs array.

The property id of 0 is treated specially by #GObject and it should not be used to store a #GParamSpec.

This function should be used if you plan to use a static array of #GParamSpecs and g_object_notify_by_pspec(). For instance, this class initialization:

enum {
  PROP_0, PROP_FOO, PROP_BAR, N_PROPERTIES
};

static GParamSpec *obj_properties[N_PROPERTIES] = { NULL, };

static void
my_object_class_init (MyObjectClass *klass)
{
  GObjectClass *gobject_class = G_OBJECT_CLASS (klass);

  obj_properties[PROP_FOO] =
    g_param_spec_int ("foo", "Foo", "Foo",
                      -1, G_MAXINT,
                      0,
                      G_PARAM_READWRITE);

  obj_properties[PROP_BAR] =
    g_param_spec_string ("bar", "Bar", "Bar",
                         NULL,
                         G_PARAM_READWRITE);

  gobject_class->set_property = my_object_set_property;
  gobject_class->get_property = my_object_get_property;
  g_object_class_install_properties (gobject_class,
                                     N_PROPERTIES,
                                     obj_properties);
}

allows calling g_object_notify_by_pspec() to notify of property changes:

void
my_object_set_foo (MyObject *self, gint foo)
{
  if (self->foo != foo)
    {
      self->foo = foo;
      g_object_notify_by_pspec (G_OBJECT (self), obj_properties[PROP_FOO]);
    }
 }

All properties should be installed during the class initializer. It is possible to install properties after that, but doing so is not recommend, and specifically, is not guaranteed to be thread-safe vs. use of properties on the same type on other threads.

Note that it is possible to redefine a property in a derived class, by installing a property with the same name. This can be useful at times, e.g. to change the range of allowed values or the default value.

Internally, overriding is implemented by creating a property of type #GParamSpecOverride; generally operations that query the properties of the object class, such as g_object_class_find_property() or g_object_class_list_properties() will return the overridden property. However, in one case, the construct_properties argument of the constructor virtual function, the #GParamSpecOverride is passed instead, so that the param_id field of the #GParamSpec will be correct. For virtually all uses, this makes no difference. If you need to get the overridden property, you can call g_param_spec_get_redirect_target().