How can drop-down menus inside a uitable be opened with just a single mouseclick?

I have build an application using the App Designer, which is using a uitable with drop-down menus inside the columns. To open these drop-down menus I have to click twice. Once for selecing the specific cell of the table and a second time to open the drop-down list. Is there a way to prevent this and get the same result with a single mouseclick?

[JClarcq]

Hello Stefan,

How did you created the dropdown in the uitable. I am struggling to make it work. I knew how to do it with GUIDE but fails with App.

Thanks

[Stefan Holleyn]

Hi,

just edit the ColumnFormat for that. e.g.

            tableFormat = {'1','2','3','4'};
            app.UITable.ColumnFormat = {tableFormat} ;
            app.UITable.Data = {'1'};

[Freya H]

Hey Stefan!

Did you find a solution to your issue? Because I am struggling with the same one...

[Stefan Holleyn]

Yes, I did. unfortunately I had to find a workaround cause there is is no official solution available yet.

I added a CellSelectionCallback to the corresponding table and on activation I perform a second mousclick via the java.awt.Robot method:

            mouse = java.awt.Robot;
            mouse.mousePress(java.awt.event.InputEvent.BUTTON1_MASK);
            mouse.mouseRelease(java.awt.event.InputEvent.BUTTON1_MASK);

[John Isler]

Thank you for this solution. It seema bit laggy. Is there another work around?

[Umesh M]

Hi

I am also struggling to add drop-down menu for a particular column for uitable and app designer both.

Please help.

Answer 1

[Rahul]

Hi @Stefan Holleyn,

I understand that while trying to use dropdowns inside a UITable, the dropdown opens after clicking on the cell twice, once for selecting the cell and once for opening the dropdown. This behaviour might cause delays in your workflow.

The workaround mentioned which uses a 'CellSelectionCallback' and perform a second click on the cell by using java.awt.Robot seems to be a good workaround in this case.

However as I checked, the UITable component has been improved in the recent versions of MATLAB (i.e. R2024a onwards). Now if the dropdown arrow present in the cell is clicked directly, the the dropdown would open without the need of more number of clicks. Clicking on any other part of the cell would not open the dropdown menu and would just select the cell.

Here is an example:

The following Mathworks documentations can be referred to know more:

'uitable': https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/uitable.html

Thanks.