Help creating a GUI for a uitable where the user can select what gets displayed on a graph.

I have a script that displays a table with the option for a user to check up to three boxes. When one of the boxes gets checked, I want a certain function corresponding to the name on the table to be displayed on a graph. The code reads as follows and the issue is, I don't know the syntax to say "if box is checked graph such and such" because I don't know how matlab interprets whether it is checked or not.

% Creates a table where the user can select options by clicking a box.
f = figure;
t = uitable(f);

t.ColumnName = {'Function','Value'};
t.ColumnEditable = true;
d = {'Sin(x)',true;'Cos(x)',false;'Tan(x)',true};
t.Data = d;
t.position = [100 100 28 78];

Answer 1

[Geoff Hayes]

Kyle - you need to assign a callback to your uitable so that when a cell is selected, you perform some action depending upon the cell. See uitable properties and in particular the section for CellSelectionCallback — Cell selection callback function.

A R2014a example (which will be slightly different from yours since you are on a later version of MATLAB than me) would be to

function createMyTable

f = figure('Position',[100 100 300 100]);
tableData={'Sin(x)', false; 'Cos(x)', false; 'Tan(x)', false}; 
columnNames =   {'Function', 'Value'};
t = uitable('Units','normalized','Position',...
            [0.1 0.1 0.9 0.9], 'Data', tableData,...
            'ColumnName', columnNames, ...
            'ColumnEditable', true,...
            'CellSelectionCallback', @onCellSelected);   
end

function onCellSelected(hObject, data)
    fprintf('selecting cell (%d,%d)\n', data.Indices(1), data.Indices(2));
end

[Walter Roberson]

And following from that...

stored_data = get(hObject, 'Data');
selected_row = data.Indices(1);
selected_row_label = stored_data{selected_row, 1};
on_or_off = stored_data{selected_row, 2};

then if it is now on and was not on before, plot it, and if it is now off and was on before, find the plot line and delete it (or make it invisible.)

[Kyle Reagan]

Thanks for the help! When I run this function, it will display the x-axis, the table in the top left, and the axes will change when I click either sin or cos on the table. However, the line plot itself wont display. Any advice?

function createMyTable

f = figure('Position',[100 100 900 500],'Visible','off');
ax = axes('Units','pixels');

tableData = {'Sin(x)', false; 'Cos(x)', false; 'Tan(x)', false}; 
columnNames = {'Function', 'Show'};
t = uitable('Units','normalized','Position',...
            [0.1 0.1 0.9 0.9], 'Data', tableData,...
            'ColumnName', columnNames, ...
            'ColumnEditable', true,...
            'CellSelectionCallback', @onCellSelected);

function onCellSelected(hObject, data)
    fprintf('selecting cell (%d,%d)\n', data.Indices(1), data.Indices(2));
    stored_data = get(hObject, 'Data');
    selected_row = data.Indices(1);
    selected_row_label = stored_data{selected_row, 1};
    on_or_off = stored_data{selected_row, 2};

      if selected_row == 1
          x = 0:pi/6:2*pi;
          y = sin(x);
          hold on
          plot(x,y,'--','color','b')
      elseif selected_row ==2
          x = 0:pi/6:2*pi;
          y = cos(x);
          hold on
          plot(x,y,'-','color','m')
      end
  end

% Create push button
    btn = uicontrol('Style', 'pushbutton', 'String', 'Clear',...
        'Position', [20 20 40 20],...
        'Callback', 'cla');  

      f.Visible = 'on';
  end

[Walter Roberson]

If there can only be one line plotted at a time, then remove the "hold on" statements.

If you want to be able to plot several at the same time, then after the "hold on" statements, add

xlim('auto'); ylim('auto')

The difficulty you have is that after the axes is created but before anything is plotted, the default xlim and ylim are typically [0 1] -- an empty plot with axes 0 to 1 labeled. When you "hold on" before having done any real plotting, then you tell MATLAB to freeze that limit. That is a problem when you then go and plot mostly outside of that region.

[Kyle Reagan]

Walter, thank you for the help. I want multiple plots to appear on the same figure at the same time. I feel like the figure of the table is covering the actual plot of the lines, so I really just want a way to send the table to the back. I edited the above code a little to include "figure(2)" before both of the "hold on" commands and now it has the table in figure 1 and both plots displayed in figure 2 when they are checked. If there isn't a simple fix to sending the table to the back then I will just keep this format.

[Kyle Reagan]

I actually just found the solution. The 'position' [.1 .1 .9 .9] was so large that it covered the whole figure. I changed it to [.8 .8 .2 .2] which moved the table to the top right corner and now the graph is visible underneath. Thanks to all for the help!