How to change color of UITable cells in app designer if its value gets bigger than an amount?

Hi All

I need to show the output of my code on an nxn table so at any time, not all but any of these values might exceed certain limits. and I want to change that cell color if its value has exceeded that value. How do I do that ?

and if you wanna add an example file, I use version 2017b. thank you very much

Answer 1

[Ameer Hamza]

This example explain how you can color cells in a uitable based on conditions: https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2020a/matlab/ref/uitable.html#mw_17e7164d-b6a6-40dd-a69e-fb422ee43794. If there is some issue to implement this method then you can ask in the comment.

[farzad]

Thank you Ameer. So this is absolutely not possible in 2017b ?

[Ameer Hamza]

I am not sure, I don't have R2017b installed. Can you try to change the cell color of uitable in App designer using this method in R2017b?

[farzad]

I have one problem, that is : it first defines a figure with position ,and then it takes th uitable of that figure

but in my app desginer, I don't need to indicate where the UItable is. since it's already put in the automatic part of the code. I am not sure how to apply this

fig = uifigure('Position',[500 500 750 350]);
uit = uitable(fig);

[Ameer Hamza]

You don't need to run these lines. App designer already creates the figure and uitable. Just try the following lines, and replace 'uit' with app.UITable

uit.Data = tdata;
uit.RowName = 'numbered';

styleIndices = ismissing(tdata);
[row,col] = find(styleIndices);

s = uistyle('BackgroundColor','yellow');
addStyle(uit,s,'cell',[row,col]);

[farzad]

well, I got this error

Undefined function or variable 'tdata'.

Error in appAll/ExecuteButtonPushed (line 1474)
    uit.Data = tdata;
 
Error using matlab.ui.control.internal.controller.ComponentController/executeUserCallback (line 309)
Error while evaluating Button PrivateButtonPushedFcn.

[Ameer Hamza]

tdata is loaded from this excel file

tdata = readtable('tsunamis.xlsx');

[farzad]

Thank you, yes actually I was using cell data.

I did this in my code, first converted the cell data to table :

    app.UITable.Data = num2cell(matrix_result);
    tdata= cell2table(app.UITable.Data);
    uit.Data=tdata;
    
    uit.RowName = 'numbered';
    styleIndices = ismissing(tdata);
    [row,col] = find(styleIndices);
    s = uistyle('BackgroundColor','yellow');
    addStyle(uit,s,'cell',[row,col]);

but I got this error :

Undefined function 'uistyle' for input arguments of type 'char'.

Error in appAll/ExecuteButtonPushed (line 1480)
    s = uistyle('BackgroundColor','yellow');
 
Error using matlab.ui.control.internal.controller.ComponentController/executeUserCallback (line 309)
Error while evaluating Button PrivateButtonPushedFcn.

[farzad]

and I checked uit :

uit = 

  struct with fields:

    Data: [6×6 table]

and they seem to be numbers

[Ameer Hamza]

Farzed: uistyle was introduced in R2019b: https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2020a/matlab/ref/uistyle.html#mw_2c6c5d14-ea97-404e-bf27-ffcbc6973d4a_seealso. For previous releases, it might not be possible to format the background colors of table cells.

[farzad]

Thank you very much, just one question , how do I specify to chane only one specific cell of the uitable if its value goes bellow or beyound a limit ?

[Ameer Hamza]

Data property of uitable are just like a normal table. You can modify it using indexing

app.UITable.Data{2,3} = 5; % change value if 2nd row and 3rd column

[farzad]

thank you very much, so if changin color is not possible on UITable for version 2017b, it won't be possible to change the edit field background color neither right ?

[Ameer Hamza]

Documentation of R2017b shows that editfield have a property named background color: https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2017b/matlab/ref/matlab.ui.control.editfield-properties.html#property_d119e1196668. It should be possible to change it in R2017b.

[farzad]

thank youvery much. Can I use the EditField to show the calculation output and not allow the user write in it ?

[Ameer Hamza]

Yes. You can set the editible property to false. You can find this property in component browser -> Interactivity.

[farzad]

Ok I tried it on 2019b.

    app.UITable.Data = num2cell(matrix_result);
    tdata= cell2table(app.UITable.Data);
    uit.Data=tdata;
    
    uit.RowName = 'numbered';
    styleIndices = ismissing(tdata);
    [row,col] = find(styleIndices);
    s = uistyle('BackgroundColor','yellow');
    addStyle(uit,s,'cell',[row,col]);

now with what I had written I get the error

Undefined function 'addStyle' for input arguments of type 'matlab.ui.style.Style'.

[Ameer Hamza]

Can you attach the app created in R2019b, which gives this error?

[farzad]

dear Ameer, I think I can't load the whole code or I should modify it a lot. but the matrix_result is a 6x6 numerical matrix that In my code I converted it to table. but it seems that all lines work , till the last command that gives error. shall you please kindly tell me how to check and verify where the problem is ?

I also only need to highlight few of the cells

[farzad]

I printed the output and I have these :

uit = 

  struct with fields:

    Data: [6×6 table]


styleIndices =

  6×6 logical array

   0   0   0   0   0   0
   0   0   0   0   0   0
   0   0   0   0   0   0
   0   0   0   0   0   0
   0   0   0   0   0   0
   0   0   0   0   0   0


row =

  0×1 empty double column vector


col =

  0×1 empty double column vector


s = 

  Style with properties:

    BackgroundColor: [1 1 0]

  Show all properties

Undefined function 'addStyle' for input arguments of type 'matlab.ui.style.Style'.

Error in appAllR2019b/ExecuteButtonPushed (line 1482)
    addStyle(uit,s,'cell',[row,col])
 
Error using matlab.ui.control.internal.controller.ComponentController/executeUserCallback (line 335)
Error while evaluating Button PrivateButtonPushedFcn.

[Ameer Hamza]

Documentation shows that addStyle was added in R2019b, so I am not sure why you would get this error. Are you using R2019b, or R2019a?

[farzad]

It's b, definitely

[Ameer Hamza]

Can you show the output of

which addStyle

[farzad]

It's existent

C:\Program Files\Polyspace\R2019b\toolbox\matlab\uicomponents\uicomponents\+matlab\+ui\+control\@Table\addStyle.m

[Ameer Hamza]

Can you show what does the function signature of this file looks like. In R2020a, it is

function addStyle(obj, styleObject, varargin)

which clearly show that it can accept style object.

[farzad]

It's the same :

function addStyle(obj, styleObject, varargin)

so maybe the problem is the way I have change the uit in my code ?

I think I have sth wrong in the first 3 lines maybe ?

    app.UITable.Data = num2cell(matrix_result);
    tdata= cell2table(app.UITable.Data);
    uit.Data=tdata;
    
    uit.RowName = 'numbered';
    styleIndices = ismissing(tdata);
    [row,col] = find(styleIndices);
    s = uistyle('BackgroundColor','yellow');
    addStyle(uit,s,'cell',[row,col]);

[Ameer Hamza]

Try using the following code. app.UITable is the handle of UITable in app designer.

tdata = readtable('tsunamis.xlsx');
vars = {'Year','Month','Day','Hour','MaxHeight','Cause','EarthquakeMagnitude'};
tdata = tdata(1:100,vars);

app.UITable.Data = tdata;
app.UITable.RowName = 'numbered';

styleIndices = ismissing(tdata);
[row,col] = find(styleIndices);

s = uistyle('BackgroundColor','yellow');
addStyle(app.UITable,s,'cell',[row,col]);

[farzad]

now I get this error a little bit before in the line ismissing, I don't have NAN objects, how do I change it to say , if any value bigger than 0.1 ?

Error using matlab.internal.math.ismissingKernel/arraySwitch (line 79)
First argument must be numeric, logical, datetime, duration, calendarDuration, string, categorical, char, cellstr, table, or timetable.

Error in matlab.internal.math.ismissingKernel (line 16)
        IA = arraySwitch(A,false);

Error in ismissing (line 70)
    IA = matlab.internal.math.ismissingKernel(A);

[farzad]

ok perfect , it worked. thank you so much

[Ameer Hamza]

I am glad to be of help.

[Himanshu Verma]

I'm using 2019a and working on a code that should be backward compatible with 2016 version onwards. So, I can't use 'addStyle' and 'uistyle'. I tried changing the cell colors using 'html' but the html code is not interpreted in 'uifigure'. How can I then set the foreground/background color of each row to different colors? Please help.

[Ameer Hamza]

I don't think there is a documented way to do that before R2019b. If the HTML trick didn't work, then most likely not an easy thing.

[farzad]

Hello Ameer. May you please check this question ? https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/570907-how-to-dynamically-define-limits-forplot-from-user-input-in-app-designer