[PyQt] PyObject to QVariant and back

[Benjamin Kloster]

Hi everyone,
since my use case is a rather long-winded description of my predicament, 
first my question:

Are there API functions of sip that I can use to convert a PyObject* to 
a QVariant with the appropriate type and the other way around?

Now why I could really use such functions: For our application, I've 
written a small C++ library that serializes QVariants along with their 
type.  I used sip to generate Python bindings to that library. Now I'd 
like to serialize Python types that aren't natively supported by 
QVariant, particularly instances of decimal.Decimal, tuples and maybe 
sets. All those are boxed by sip as QVariants with the user type 
"PyQt_PyObject" (or something like that).

For decimal.Decimal, the solution seems relatively easy. Retrieve the 
PyObject* from the QVariant passed to my serializer, test whether it is 
indeed a Decimal instance and if so, serialize it so that I can later 
recognize it as a Decimal in the deserializer. There, I create a 
PyObject* of type Decimal with the saved data, pack it in a QVariant and 
return it.

For tuples and sets, it seems a little more complicated. Since I can 
only retrieve the elements as PyObject pointers, I can't just 
recursively call my serialize(QVariant) function. I also can't just put 
them in a QVariant with the "PyQt_PyObject" user type because the 
PyObject may actually be a float, QPoint or something else that is 
natively supported by QVariant.

Which brings us back to my above question. I have seen the 
"qpycore_PyObject_AsQVariant" and "qpycore_PyObject_FromQVariant" in 
QtCore/qvariant.sip, but since they don't seem to be documented 
anywhere, I am unsure whether they are a strictly internal feature.

Thanks for any help,
Ben