App Designer keeps adding multiple Instances of EditFields with the same name on startup

Hello Everyone!

I am having a strange problem with the app designer right now:

Every time I start the app designer and load the .mlapp-File of the Project I'm currently working on, there are multiple instances of the same EditField created. It began with only one copy of an EditField I manually added on the GUI. I didn't think much about it and simply deleted the second instance. But it seems like this problem has grown exponentially with every start of app designer. Now, when I open up my Project 500 (!!) EditFields with the same name are created! 'Simply' deleting all of them is obviously not anymore an acceptable workaround - especially since 'ctrl+a' doesn't work in the Component Browser and you have to selected them all manually...

I have no idea why the app designer creates these multiple instances on the startup - after I deleted all multiple instances, they also didn't appear in the non-editable Function 'createComponents(app)' anymore.

Does anyone of you have an idea on that? Where in my code could be a bug causing this phenomenon? Or could this be an appdesigner-internal bug? The project itself is already quite big with ~260 components even without those multiple and unwanted EditFields...

I'm desperately looking for your help! Thanks a lot in advance.

[Wei Wong]

I am having the same issue as well :/

[guy sharon]

Same here... any solution?

[DKalale]

And same here

[covfefe]

Same issue here... 4 years ago and still no solution?!?

[Octane]

Same problem with the EditField

[Paul Kelly]

It isn't just EditFields. I created a custom component (which takes up a lot more resources than EditField) and added it to a Parent app..The Parent application now has over a thousand instances of this component and just hangs up whenever I try to open it.

[Henry]

Same issue here, running the latest version of 2024a

Always when loading I have to rewrite the callbacks because it unlinks the component (which is duplicated) to the callback

Answer 1

[Alex]

I recently had a similar issue and the more I tried to correct it the more duplicate EditFields appeared, even after deleting everything from my app they would still reappear.

The only way I could correct the problem was to go to the canvas tab and convert it to a different type (in my case I was using app without reflow, so I selected a reflow option), then I set it back to my original choice and it solved my issue. I deleted the duplicates after converting, but I would assume that it was the conversion that resolved it and not the order of deleting.

Hopefully that will help if the other comment does not.

Answer 2

[Benoit Beaulieu]

I had the same issue but I found a way to fix it once and for all.

Here's the issue: Instances of the problematic objects are kept in the components.UIFigure.Children object references and therefore are recreated at every load.

Here's what you have to do:

• Once your mlapp is loaded, delete all instances of the unwanted object. This step is optionnal, but will prevent the need of deleting them from the xml file late on.
• Save and close the mlapp file.
• Rename the mlapp file with ".zip" extension.
• Open the archive and navigate to "Filename.mlapp.zip"\appdesigner
• Load the appModel.mat file into MatLab
• Delete every instances of the unwanted object you can find within "components.UIFigure.Children" using the delete function

delete(components.UIFigure.Children(1:16)) % Delete the 16 first objects referenced in children

• Save all loaded variables as a mat file named appModel.mat

save appModel.mat

• Replace appModel.mat in "Filename.mlapp.zip"\appdesigner (drag and drop)
• Remove the .zip extension renaming the filename
• Reload the .mlap file and Voilà!

if you didn't delete the objects before saving the mlapp, you'll also need to delete the corresponding entries in the xml : "Filename.mlapp.zip"\matlab\document.xml. Each objets is referenced 2 times in the documents. the structure looks like the "code view" of the app designer.

[Alex Ander]

I have the same problem and have tried your solution. If I copy the modified appModel.mat file into the folder .....\appdesigner or drag and drop it there, the remaining folders in the ZIP archive disappear and only the folder ....\appdesigner remains. I had already deleted the components beforehand so that I didn't have to adapt the XML file. But since you write that you may have to edit this afterwards, it seems that the folders .....\matlab etc. do not disappear after you have copied in the appModel.mat file.

When I want to start it from the App Designer, I get "error loading "......mlapp" and when starting from the Explorer in Matlab

Can't open file.

Error in run (line 63)

pathscript = evalin('caller', strcat('which(''', script, ''')'));

perhaps you have a few more tips.

Thank you and best regards

[Benoit Beaulieu]

I did the procedure using the embedded windows zip manager. I know unzipping the file and rezipping it would corrupt the mlapp, hence the drag n drop procedure of the appModel.mat file. In my case, all other files remained untouched.

Have you tried copying the entire content of the .mlapp.zip and put it back with the modified appModel.mat?

[Alex Ander]

Thank you so much, now it worked. Used 7-Zip and drag and drop and all other files remained untouched.

Answer 3

[Yemi Ajayi]

I'm going to put this here in case this does help anyone else who has run into this issue as I did yesterday.

The only thing I discovered that worked was to delete ALL current instances of EditField in my component browser (luckily there were only 4 duplicates), AND delete any callbacks, functions, etc that references that EditField from the code browser. Save. Close.

On the next launch, another single copy of the same EditField showed up and I deleted that. Save. Close. This seemed to solve the issue on my next launch as no more copies showed up.

Honestly, I am very wary of using EditFields now due to this. I'm actually very sure that I only dragged one copy of it initially into my app design.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone.

[Arnaud Dieudonné]

This is not working for me .... this bug is terrible. Is someone know how to fix it .. ?

Answer 4

[Sherman Marcus]

Benoit's solution didn't work for me. After removing every single instance of my edit field object from the source and from "components.UIFigure.Children", meaning the name of the object appeared no where in the file, it still returned with a vengeance, producing 13 instances of the object. I then noticed, though, that if I remove all instances of the object, save the file and open it again, I have one fewer instances than before, and it did not return to "components.UIFigure.Children". So I went from 13 to 12 to 11 etc. until the delinquent object was gone, never to appear again. Hope this helps.