Create shortcut to pushbutton

How can I create shortcuts (ctrl+letter) to my pushbutton?

Answer 1

[Divyajyoti Nayak]

Hi @zeyneb khalili,

To create a shortcut for push button in MATLB figures, the ‘KeyPressFcn’ and ‘KeyReleaseFcn’ callbacks of the figure object can be used.

Here are the steps I followed to program shortcut keys to a push button:

• Setup the GUI figure and button.

f = figure; 
button = uicontrol(f,'Style','pushbutton','String','Push','Callback',@buttonPressed); 

• Initialize a ‘ctrlPressed’ variable in the figure’s ‘UserData’ to store a value based on whether the Ctrl button is pressed or not.

f.UserData = struct('ctrlPressed',false); 

• Add the ‘KeyPressFcn’ and ‘KeyReleaseFcn’ callbacks to the figure.

f.KeyPressFcn = {@keyPressed, f, button}; 
f.KeyReleaseFcn = {@keyReleased, f}; 

• Define the ‘KeyPressFcn’ callback to handle key press events.

function keyPressed (src, event, figureHandle, buttonHandle) 

• If Ctrl key is pressed, set ‘ctrlPressed’ to true.

    switch event.Key 
        case 'control' 
            figureHandle.UserData.ctrlPressed = true; 

• If the desired shortcut key is pressed, call the callback function of the push button (Additional cases can be made for more shortcuts).

        case 'd' 
            if(figureHandle.UserData.ctrlPressed == true) 
                buttonHandle.Callback(); 
            end 
    end 
end 

• Define the ‘KeyReleaseFcn’ to set ‘ctrlPressed’ to false if Ctrl button is released.

function keyReleased(src, event, figureHandle) 
    if(event.Key == 'control') 
        figureHandle.UserData.ctrlPressed = false; 
    end 
end 

• Define button callback.

function buttonPressed(src,event) 
    disp('Button pressed'); 
end 

For more information about the properties of the figure object used in the code, here are some documentations:

UserData: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/matlab.ui.figure-properties.html?searchHighlight=figure%20properties&s_tid=srchtitle_support_results_1_figure%20properties#buiwuyk-1_sep_shared-UserData

Keyboard Callbacks: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/matlab.ui.figure-properties.html?searchHighlight=figure%20properties&s_tid=srchtitle_support_results_1_figure%20properties#d126e530890