So, in my application, I create a single QtCore.QTimer object and then call the singleShot method on it to evoke a function after say 60 secs. Now, at any given point in time, if I would need to call the singleShot method on it again and prevent the previous singleShot method from taking effect (that is preventing it from calling the caller passed to it, if the second time the singleShot is invoked before the first 60 seconds), what do I need to do? How can I 'kill' the previous QTimer and completely forget about it and work only with the current QTimer?

Can someone help me out with this?

Here's just a sample code:

def main():q = QtCore.QTimer()q.singleShot(4000, print_hello)q.killTimer(id)     ##how can I get the value of 'id' so that print_hello() is not called before the end of the 4 seconds?def print_hello():print 'hello'

Thanks

The problem is that QTimer.singleShot() does not return a reference to the QTimer. I don't know of anyway to get the Timer ID so you can kill it using that method. However, you can instantiate a normal QTimer and make it a single-shot timer (this is not what you have done in your code provided, calling singleShot on an instance of QTimer creates a new QTimer which you do not have access to.)

However, all is not lost. You can create a normal QTimer and convert it to a single shot timer using setSingleShot(True). This allows you to call the stop() method if you wish to abort the timer. See the code example below which does what you require, on a 3 second timeout. You can push the button as many times as you like in rapid succession, and it will print "hello" once, 3 seconds after you stop. If you push it once, wait 4 seconds, and push it again, it will of course print out twice!

Hope that helps!

import sys
from PyQt4.QtCore import *
from PyQt4.QtGui import *class MyApp(QWidget):def __init__(self,*args,**kwargs):QWidget.__init__(self,*args,**kwargs)self.current_timer = Noneself.layout = QVBoxLayout(self)self.button = QPushButton('start timer')self.button.clicked.connect(self.start_timer)self.layout.addWidget(self.button)def start_timer(self):if self.current_timer:self.current_timer.stop()self.current_timer.deleteLater()self.current_timer = QTimer()self.current_timer.timeout.connect(self.print_hello)self.current_timer.setSingleShot(True)self.current_timer.start(3000)def print_hello(self):print 'hello'# Create QApplication and QWidget
qapp = QApplication(sys.argv)  
app = MyApp()
app.show()
qapp.exec_()