QGIS plugin builder puts icon in different toolbars depending on plugin template selected

Question

When building a plugin using the QGIS Plugin Builder plugin, if I select 'Tool button with dialog' as the template, then my plugin button will be placed in the Plugins toolbar in QGIS.

If I build the plugin boilerplate with the 'Tool button with dock widget' template, then the plugin icon is put in its own toolbar.

I have compared the code and cannot find how to change this. I would like to build a plugin with a dialog, but have the icon in its own toolbar.

Please let me know if there is a way to make my question more clear.

Answer 1

Using Plugin builder version 3.2.1 I found differences. In case of Tool button with dialog in add_action function addToolBarIcon is used (line 148):

self.iface.addToolBarIcon(action)

which "Add an icon to the plugins toolbar." (quote from QGIS API documentation).

In case of Tool button with dock widget a new toolbar is created in __init__ function (line 68):

self.toolbar = self.iface.addToolBar(u'test_dock')
self.toolbar.setObjectName(u'test_dock')

and in the add_action function the action is added to the toolbar of the plugin (line 154):

self.toolbar.addAction(action)

So if you would like to create a Tool button with dialog plug-in with its own toolbar, please add your own toolbar to QGIS GUI in the __init__ function of your plug-in, for example after self.menu = ... (line 64)

self.toolbar = self.iface.addToolBar(u'my_plugin')
self.toolbar.setObjectName(u'my_plugin')

Please replace my_plugin to the name of your plug-in.

Change the self.iface.addToolBarIcon call in add_action function (line 147) to

   if add_to_toolbar:
        self.toolbar.addAction(action)

I used the line numbers of the original generated code.