UICOMPONENT - expands uicontrol to all Java classes

Enhanced replacement for uicontrol & javacomponent, accepting all Java (Swing/AWT) style components

Description

UICOMPONENT is intended as a direct replacement of Matlab's built-in UICONTROL and JAVACOMPONENT functions. It accepts all parameters and styles that UICONTROL accepts, as well as any other displayable Java (Swing/AWT) component class. The calling convention and syntax of UICONTROL were preserved for full backwards compatibility.

UICOMPONENT uses the built-in UICONTROL whenever possible (i.e, for all the standard styles), and uses JAVACOMPONENT to create and display all the other java classes. UICOMPONENT supports the entire Swing/AWT and any user-defined classes, in several equivalent case-insensitive formats. For example, 'Spinner', 'spiNNer', 'JSpinner' and 'javax.swing.jspinner' are all equivalent and recognized.

Notable new styles that are now available (unavailable in built-in UICONTROL): spinner, slider, editable comboBox, passwordField, tree, table, fileChooser, colorChooser, progressBar, applet. But there are so many more - whatever is available in Java is now seamlessly available in your Matlab GUI.

Examples (more examples in attached screenshot & in the help comment):
- uicomponent('style','jspinner','value',7); % simple spinner with initial value
- uicomponent('style','javax.swing.jslider','tag','myObj'); % simple horizontal slider
- uicomponent('style','JComboBox',{1,pi,'text'},'editable',true); % editable drop-down

Callbacks:
Over 30 callback hooks are exposed to the user for all components (the exact list depends on the specific java component used). These callbacks include mouse movement/clicks, keyboard events, focus gain/loss, data changes etc.

Warning:
This code heavily relies on undocumented and unsupported Matlab functionality. It works on Matlab 7+, but use at your own risk!

Change log:
See the bottom of this page

Bugs and suggestions:
Please send to Yair Altman (altmany at gmail dot com)

• Acknowledgements: This submission has inspired the following:; statusbar, passwordEntryDialog, UISplitPane - Split a container (figure/frame/uipanel) into two resizable sub-containers, Using java swing components in MATLAB
• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.4 (R2007a)
• Other requirements: Java should be enabled (duh!) Should work on Matlab 7+, but might work on earlier versions too. Does NOT work on Matlab 6.5

[Matthew Whitaker]

This is really fascinating. Note your example 1 and 2 should read:
uicomponent('Style','edit','String','hello');

and
uicomponent('Parent', fig2, 'Style', 'edit','String','hello');

instead of 'uicontrol'

I have not found any obvious issues although with the extensive use of non-documented features I'll have to test more extensively but this is a really nice wrapper for uicontrol and javacomponent. A lot of goodies in the code for anyone interested in incorporating Swing components into their interfaces.

[Arwel Hughes]

This is an excellent tool. It works very well with a number of components I've tried.

[Malcolm Lidierth]

Excellent. Produces great GUIs that work on both Windows and Mac without needing tweaking for each platform.

[Heiko Marx]

After changing line 256 from strcmpi to strncmpi, because I use 'Visible' instead of 'vis', this excellent tool has made it to my daily use. Thank you very much!

[Dawn Song]

Great TOOl ?

[Dawn Song]

Oh, sorry, I mistyped, I meaned ! not ?

[Qun Han]

Great!

[Jax Cao]

Useful tool

[Jveer]

the best gui related submission yet

[Jveer]

 

[Jveer]

can these components be made transparent for e.g overlaying a transparent ticklabeled slider over a colorbar?

[Hans]

Thanks for sharing this code with us, Yair. Whenever I need a java thingy that is not available in MATLAB, I use uicomponent.