dialog with checkboxes in gui

Hi! I want to make a dialog box with a variable number of checkboxes. From my main GUI, I can create a figure, then I create checkboxes in that figure with "uicontrol...", and one button for "OK". But, how do I associate a callback with that button? and how do I read the status of those checkboxes?

I have also tried to make a new window with GUIDE, but where in the code should I create the checkboxes? and how do I give to the called gui the number of checkboxes?

Or someone please tell me where in the documentation is this covered. Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

[Oleg Komarov]

In the following example I build a basic gui which has two checkboxes and a pushbutton.

The only action assigned to the push button is to check which checkboxes are selected (save as myGUI and execute myGUI in the command window):

function myGUI
% Create figure
h.f = figure('units','pixels','position',[200,200,150,50],...
             'toolbar','none','menu','none');
% Create yes/no checkboxes
h.c(1) = uicontrol('style','checkbox','units','pixels',...
                'position',[10,30,50,15],'string','yes');
h.c(2) = uicontrol('style','checkbox','units','pixels',...
                'position',[90,30,50,15],'string','no');    
% Create OK pushbutton   
h.p = uicontrol('style','pushbutton','units','pixels',...
                'position',[40,5,70,20],'string','OK',...
                'callback',@p_call);
    % Pushbutton callback
    function p_call(varargin)
        vals = get(h.c,'Value');
        checked = find([vals{:}]);
        if isempty(checked)
            checked = 'none';
        end
        disp(checked)
    end

end

[ram]

Thank You, thanks a lot. Its working....

[Ryan Elson]

Hi @Oleg Komarov, thanks for the code, really useful, I am trying to make a version which outputs the vector of checked buttons and have tried multiple things but have not managed to get it to work and was wondering if you might be able to help (although I appreciate that your original post was 10 years ago!)

My aim is to call the function using a command like the following:

checked = checkBoxGui({'option 1', 'option 2', 'option 3'})

function checked = checkBoxGui(options)

% determine the number of handles
nOptions = numel(options);
boxHeight = nOptions * 30;
boxWidth = 200;
checkBoxHeights = linspace(30, boxHeight-30, nOptions);
checkBoxHeights = flip(checkBoxHeights);
disp('Check box heights')
disp(checkBoxHeights)

% Create figure
h.f = figure('units','pixels','position',[400,400,boxWidth,boxHeight],...
             'toolbar','none','menu','none');
% Create checkboxes 
for op = 1:nOptions
    h.c(op) = uicontrol('style','checkbox','units','pixels',...
                'position',[10,checkBoxHeights(op),200,15],'string',options{op});
end


% Create OK pushbutton   
h.p = uicontrol('style','pushbutton','units','pixels',...
                'position',[40,5,70,20],'string','OK',...
                'callback',@p_call);

    % Pushbutton callback
    function checked = p_call(varargin)
        vals = get(h.c,'Value');
        checked = find([vals{:}]);
        close(h.f)
        if isempty(checked)
            checked = 'none';
        end
        disp(checked)
    end

end

[TEST00]

use 'uiwait' with delete

add 1 line inside function 'p_call' like:

h.checked = checked;

and add 3 line last section of function 'checkBoxGui' like:

uiwait(h.f);

delete(h.f);

check = h.checked;

then, you can get output value of what you checked.