How do I find the handle to the colorbar for a specific axes

I would like to know how to programatically find the handle to the colorbar for a specific axis in a figure which contains several subplots which each of which might or might not have an associated colorbar. Since colorbars are children of the figure it is not obvious to me how I get the handle of the correct colorbar. I can easily get a list of all of the colorbar handles, but I do not see any property value which indicates which bar goes with which axis.

Answer 1

[Dave White]

8 years late, but you can also access the hidden Colorbar property 'Axes' which references the peer axis:

cbar=colorbar;
cbar.Axes

[Walter Roberson]

Likewise, if you have an axes handle, then it has a Colorbar property

plot(rand(1,20))
ax  = gca

ax = 
  Axes with properties:

             XLim: [0 20]
             YLim: [0 1]
           XScale: 'linear'
           YScale: 'linear'
    GridLineStyle: '-'
         Position: [0.1300 0.1100 0.7750 0.8150]
            Units: 'normalized'

  Show all properties

cbar = colorbar;

cbar.Axes == ax

ans = logical
   1

ax.Colorbar == cbar

ans = logical
   1

Answer 2

[Morteza]

use the specific term for each color bar before making them like:

t = colorbar('peer',gca,'Tag','colorbar1'); 
get(t)

[Shai Machnes]

But this also creates a colorbar if non existed previously. How can I test if there is a colorbar?

[Michael G. Baker]

C = findall(gcf,'type','ColorBar');
if isempty(C)
    display('No ColorBar.');
end

ColorBars are apparently children of the Figure object, rather than the Axes. I'm not sure how Matlab keeps the colorbars associated with the relevant axes, though. If I need to modify positions and settings later on, I set the object Tags to the same value and use the findall command.

[Walter Roberson]

If I recall correctly, colorbars used to be children of axes, but are now children of the parent object instead.

Answer 3

[Matt J]

Here is an excruciatingly roundabout method.

function [Hcb,tf]=getColorbars(hAxes)
%Return colorbar handles for axes with colorbars, and optionally a logical
%indicator array telling which axes have colorbars.
%                          
%IN:                         
%                            
%    hAxes: an array of axes handles
%                            
%OUT:                        
%                            
%    Hcb: an array of colorbar handles corresponding to the elements of
%         hAxes. If hAxes(i) has no colorbar, then Hcb(i) will be
%         an empty GraphicsPlaceHolder.
%
%     tf: a logical array indicating which elements of hAxes have
%     colorbars.

Hcb=gobjects(size(hAxes));
tf=false(size(hAxes));
N=numel(Hcb);
 for i=1:N
    
    Hfig=ancestor(hAxes(i),'figure');
    
    before=numel(findobj(Hfig,'Type','colorbar'));
     colorbar(hAxes(i),'off');
    after= numel(findobj(Hfig,'Type','colorbar'));
    
    if after<before %colorbar was present
        Hcb(i)=colorbar(hAxes(i));
        tf(i)=1;
    end
  end
end