Select a cell from a uitable using two edit boxes

Hi, I'm working on a GUI and i would like to select a cell from an uitable using two edit boxes, one for the row and the second for the column instead of clicking directly on the cell, as the table is very big. I've tried several things with the CellSelectionCallback but haven't reached a solution.

Thanks in advance

[Adam]

Do you mean you actually want the cell of the uitable to be highlighted or you just want to select the data from that row/column?

CellSelectionCallback is triggered when you make a selection so doesn't seem like it would be useful to do either.

[telmo egues]

I mean just select the cell as if you selected it manually.

Thanks

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

Matlab R2021a and later

Starting in Matlab R2021a, you can programmatically scroll to any row, column, or cell of a uitable using the scroll function (see Four New App Features in MATLAB R2021a).

Syntax examples:

• scroll(uit,vlocation) where vlocation is 'top'-'bottom'
• scroll(uit,hlocation) where hlocation is 'left'-'right'
• scroll(uit,target,targetIndex) where target is 'row'-'column'-'cell' and targetIndex is a row or column number or a 1x2 cell location.

Prior to R20201a

Here's a method to programmatically select a cell which highlights the chosen cell as if it were just selected manually. This requires FEX: findjobj(); credit to this answer .

% Create a working UI table for the example
f = figure;
t = uitable(f,'Data',randi(100,10,3),'Position',[20 20 262 204]);

% Select row and col numbers
row = 2; 
col = 3; 

% Select cell programmatically
jUIScrollPane = findjobj(t);
jUITable = jUIScrollPane.getViewport.getView;
jUITable.changeSelection(row-1,col-1, false, false);

If you're trying to act on that cell by applying a function to the cell's content, you might not have to actually highlight it and you could avoid the 3rd party function.

[Adam Danz]

Note that this method does not work in app designer UI tables.

Also note that the findjobj() function uses the JavaFrame property and javacomponent function which will no longer be supported by Matlab in future releases.

More info:

https://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/app-designer/java-swing-alternatives.html

Answer 2

[Mark Thomson]

Hi, I just had this issue with a table in App Designer. Have buttons to shift rows, and want the "Selected Cells" range to move as well.

In the end, I chose to store the cell indices in an App property variable (here: 'selected_cell'), and use my own highlighting, as per (for a table called 'Par_Table')

function Par_TableCellSelection(app, event)
    app.selected_cell = event.Indices; % App property variable
    update_highlighted_cells(app);
end

function update_highlighted_cells(app)
    removeStyle(app.Par_Table);
    addStyle(app.Par_Table,app.highlighted_cell_style, ...
        'cell',app.selected_cell);
end

after defining

 app.highlighted_cell_style=uistyle('BackgroundColor','yellow');

Then you can update the values in 'app.selected_cell' in other callbacks and call 'update_highlighted_cells' again.

Seems to update fast enough for me. Maybe someone already posted this work-around and I didn't find it.

Regards, MT

[Adam Danz]

+1

Thanks for the update, Mark Thomson

addStyle & removeStyle were added in r20219b.

[Konvictus177]

Thanks!

Answer 3

[Barbara Presley]

I also need to highlight cells, and this solution didn't work for me. I installed the FEX: findobj(). jUIScrollPane = findjobj(t) did not produce anything. I exchaged t with f to see if findjobj worked at all. It did.

[Adam Danz]

Is t the handle to your UI table? Share a snippet of your code.