draggable

Allows graphical objects to be dragged in a figure.

Description

This function enables a graphical object (be it a line, plot, patch, rectangle, text box, etc.) to be dragged inside an axis, with a very simple syntax ("draggable(h)"), following or not horizontal, vertical or diagonal constraints. Limits can be imposed on the object's movement.

Some figure properties are changed by the function, but previous properties are restored as soon as the drag is stopped. The behavior of the object can be reverted to its original, non-draggable state, by issuing "draggable(h,'off')".

Typical uses of this function would include non-standard GUI elements, such as markers that are moved on a figure or image. A function which is called when the object is moved can be provided as an optional argument, so that the movement triggers further actions.

See the provided file dragdemo.m for usage examples.

Acknowledgements

This file inspired Draggable Rect, Add An Roi Toolbar To Your Figure, Enhanced Dicom Viewer, Roitool, and Digitize07.

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 6.5 (R13)

[Shahab]

Excellent, tahnks

[Francois Bouffard]

Shaun's problem should be fixed now; I instead simply used fgh = gcbf; -- it should work in all situations. Thanks to Esmerald Aliai for pointing out a similar bug.

[Sebastian Holmqvist]

 

[Shaun]

I love it, and I use it all the time.
One mod I have made for axes which live inside UICONTAINERS...

fgh = get(axh,'Parent');
while ~strcmp(get(fgh,'Type'),'figure')
fgh = get(fgh,'Parent');
end

[Francois Bouffard]

Sorry for the years-long delay since the last update... The Jan 13 update contains a bug fix by G. Fortin and Steven Bierer's drag-end function call. I'll try to add Brett's suggestion shortly.

[Brett Shoelson]

Most excellent work...rock solid!

[Steven Bierer]

An excellent, deviously simple tool. The code is well commented, and I was easily able to modify it to include a new input argument: a function handle that executes AFTER the object has been dragged. (I will contact the author with this addition, in case he'd like to incorporate it.)

[Florian Jousset]

Thanks!
I used it to move text, and it worked well after adapting your code to objects having a "Position" property of 3 values.

[Nathan Tomlin]

Wow, amazingly well done!

[Chris Sarantos]

Excellent, just what I was looking for!

[Paul Premakumar]

Very handy file!

[Tom Nagel]

I love it because it learns me a lot about mousebutton handling.
I tried to make a text object draggable: that doesn't work!

[w L]

 

[Laszlo Balkay]

It is a really great work with impressive options.

Congratulations!

[Ohad Gal]

Well done.
you might want to add an option for the following:
1. force a movement of the object, using an outside calling function.
2. enable the user to choose it's rendering mode
3. export (and update a given edit box) the DX and DY movement of the object

anyways, It's great. thanks you !

Ohad.