Matlab GUI Tutorial - Disable Mouse Clicking

15 Nov 2007 Quan Quach 24 comments 4,038 views

Introduction

This tutorial will show you how to implement a “busy” status wherein the user is informed that the Matlab GUI is processing a task, and cannot accept more tasks until the current task is complete. This will be accomplished by disabling all of the buttons on the GUI and changing the mouse pointer to an hourglass icon. This feature is useful when you have a function callback that takes a couple of seconds to run. During this time, you want to prevent the user from pressing other buttons that may break your GUI or interrupt your function.

This tutorial is written for those with some experience creating a Matlab GUI. If you’re new to creating GUIs in Matlab, you should visit this tutorial first. Basic knowledge of Matlab and an understanding on how data is shared among callbacks is highly recommended. Matlab version 2007a is used in writing this tutorial. Both earlier versions and new versions should be compatible as well (as long as it isan’t too outdated). Let’s get started!

Disabling and Enabling Buttons, Changing the Mouse Cursor

First, download the sample GUI here. Unzip the files and place them wherever you please.
Now, type guide at the command prompt.
Choose to open the sample GUI by clicking on “Open Existing GUI”. Click on “Browse” to locate where you saved the GUI files.
Here is what the GUI should look like when you open it:
Click on the icon on the GUI figure to bring up the accompanying .m file.

Now, add the following code to the end of the .m file. I wrote here that I was strongly against writing functions in this manner, but I think this is a reasonable exception.

function disableButtons(handles)
%change the mouse cursor to an hourglass
set(handles.figure1,'Pointer','watch');
 
%disable all the buttons so they cannot be pressed
set(handles.pushbutton1,'Enable','off');
set(handles.pushbutton2,'Enable','off');
set(handles.pushbutton3,'Enable','off');
 
function enableButtons(handles)
%change the mouse cursor to an arrow
set(handles.figure1,'Pointer','arrow');
 
%enable all the buttons so they can be pressed
set(handles.pushbutton1,'Enable','on');
set(handles.pushbutton2,'Enable','on');
set(handles.pushbutton3,'Enable','on');

Now, add the following code to each of the button callback functions.

disableButtons(handles);
refresh(busyStatus) %redraws the GUI to reflect changes
keyboard
enableButtons(handles);

Now, save your .m file and run the GUI. You should see the following GUI appear
Press any of the buttons. You should see the following change reflected on your GUI now. Notice that the mouse cursor has also changed to an hourglass icon.
Now, type return at the command prompt to finish the callback. You should notice that the GUI has returned back to normal.

If you plan on using this code in your own GUI, you won’t be needing the “keyboard” command. Instead, your code would look this:

disableButtons(handles);
refresh(busyStatus) %redraws the GUI to reflect changes
 
%insert your code here, "keyboard" is not needed
%it was merely used as a demonstration example
 
%during this part of your code, the buttons are disabled
%when your code is done running, we enable the buttons again
 
enableButtons(handles);

This is the end of the tutorial.

24 Responses to “Matlab GUI Tutorial - Disable Mouse Clicking”

on 20 Nov 2007 at 12:13 pm 1Mike

Excellent! How do you suggest getting around passing around the handles structure? Maybe by only passing around particular variables and updating the handles structure higher up the call tree?
on 20 Nov 2007 at 12:25 pm 2Quan Quach

Hey Mike,

I just passed the entire handles structure because in more complex GUIs, you will most likely have more than 3 buttons, and passing all those arguments could get unruly. You can also try passing each button object as parameters to the enable and disable function. Granted, the code isn’t very flexible because each time you add a new button object, the enable and disable functions have to be manually updated.
on 14 Mar 2008 at 10:53 am 3DeriK

Hello,

First of all congratulations for your work, but I want to add that in my case “refresh(busyStatus)” does not work. busyStatus is not defined and also in my case, I do not want to press a key to refresh the gui.

I found drawnow where:

DRAWNOW “flushes the event queue” and forces MATLAB to update the screen.

And by taking out the lines:

disableButtons(handles);
-> refresh(busyStatus) %redraws the GUI to reflect changes
-> keyboard
enableButtons(handles);

and substituting them by drawnow it works perfect!!

disableButtons(handles);
-> drawnow();
enableButtons(handles);

Thank you!
on 14 Mar 2008 at 12:21 pm 4Quan Quach

Hi Derik,

You’re right, drawnow will work too. Thanks for the tip.
on 14 Mar 2008 at 2:23 pm 5Quan Quach

busyStatus is the name of the GUI in the example I provided, so if you named it differently, it will not work.
on 03 Apr 2008 at 8:09 am 6daniel

hello,

i tried to use your script in my gui (named gui) - but it does not work.
in my case, when i push a button, only the buttons of the first uipanel are inactive, the others als still active - and also, the inactive buttons of the uipanel dont change back in active mode - i used the keyboard and draw now function. could you please help me?

function disableButtons(handles)
%change the mouse cursor to an hourglass
set(handles.gui,’Pointer’,'watch’);
set(handles.edit_AnsCommand,’String’,'BUSY’);

%disable all the buttons so they cannot be pressed
%set(handles.pushbutton_durchflussInitialisierungStarten,’Enable’,'off’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_durchflussInitialisierungAbbruch,’Enable’,'off’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_eckpunkteUeberschreiben,’Enable’,'off’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_geometriePlotten,’Enable’,'off’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_runCommand,’Enable’,'off’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_cadAuswaehlen,’Enable’,'off’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_cadImportieren,’Enable’,'off’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_doTranslation,’Enable’,'off’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_calcRotation,’Enable’,'off’);

% ————————————————————————-
function enableButtons(handles)
%change the mouse cursor to an arrow
set(handles.gui,’Pointer’,'arrow’);
set(handles.edit_AnsCommand,’String’,'READY’);

%enable all the buttons so they can be pressed
%set(handles.pushbutton_durchflussInitialisierungStarten,’Enable’,'on’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_durchflussInitialisierungAbbruch,’Enable’,'on’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_eckpunkteUeberschreiben,’Enable’,'on’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_geometriePlotten,’Enable’,'on’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_runCommand,’Enable’,'on’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_cadAuswaehlen,’Enable’,'on’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_cadImportieren,’Enable’,'on’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_doTranslation,’Enable’,'on’);
%set(handles.pushbutton_calcRotation,’Enable’,'on’);

my pushbuttons are all using this code:

% Busy-Status
disableButtons(handles);
drawnow();
enableButtons(handles);

ex:
% — Executes on button press in pushbutton_calcRotation.
function pushbutton_calcRotation_Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)
% hObject handle to pushbutton_calcRotation (see GCBO)
% eventdata reserved - to be defined in a future version of MATLAB
% handles structure with handles and user data (see GUIDATA)

% Busy-Status
disableButtons(handles);
drawnow();
enableButtons(handles);

or

% — Executes on button press in pushbutton_doTranslation.
function pushbutton_doTranslation_Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)
% hObject handle to pushbutton_doTranslation (see GCBO)
% eventdata reserved - to be defined in a future version of MATLAB
% handles structure with handles and user data (see GUIDATA)

% Busy-Status
disableButtons(handles);
drawnow();
enableButtons(handles);

thx for help
on 03 Apr 2008 at 9:25 am 7Quan Quach

from what I can see, the code looks fine. please contact me throug the contact form if you need any futher assistance
on 04 Apr 2008 at 7:02 am 8nia

coollll!!! it works. thx lots~~~!!!!!!!!!! =)
on 16 Apr 2008 at 12:25 pm 9ABDUL WAHAB YOUNUS

thanx alot!!!
on 02 Jul 2008 at 6:15 am 10Salopa

Good job. It was helpfull for me. thx
on 02 Jul 2008 at 6:31 am 11Maddy

No more rectangle switching colour from green to red. Thx a lot, fine idea and work.
on 29 Jul 2008 at 8:14 am 12Mac

Hi all,
Firstly thanks for the very helpfull forum.
Small problem, I have two GUI’s, call them A and B, and B is called directly from A. I would like to disable the buttons A until B is closed….
Any ideas…
Mac
on 29 Jul 2008 at 2:14 pm 13Quan Quach

Hey Mac,

First visit his tutorial to learn how to share data between two guis.

http://www.blinkdagger.com/matlab/matlab-gui-how-to-easily-share-data-between-two-separate-guis

I haven’t done this before, but this is how I imagine how you would do it:

When B is called from A via a pushbutton, in that callback, you would want to:

1. disable all of A’s buttons (which you learned in this tutorial)
2. call GUI B (i assume you know how to do this)

When B is closed, you want to enable A’s buttons again. you can do this by modifying the CloseRequestFcn function for GUI B.

Go here for more information on that:
http://www.blinkdagger.com/matlab/matlab-gui-tutorial-close-gui-confirmation

Hope that helps,

Quan
on 21 Oct 2008 at 10:14 am 14Chris

This works great, but after enableButtons executes, the active button is different from the one I just pushed. I’m wanting to use the arrow keys with a popupmenu, but after hitting the up or down arrow, the button created after it (when I first built the gui) becomes active. How do I keep the button I just pushed as the active button?
on 21 Oct 2008 at 10:16 am 15Chris

Let me clarify. All the popupmenu’s on my gui go back to the enabled state successfully, but the incorrect popupmenu is highlighted.
on 04 Dec 2008 at 4:37 pm 16keith

Quan,
First off, I’d like to say that you have a great blog - your writing style is clear and your choices of topics are excellent. It is a help to the Matlab programming community.

I’m having some trouble implementing this. I get the following command window error upon clicking on my “execute and plot” pushbutton:

??? Undefined function or variable ‘hObject’.

Error in ==> TestGUI>disableButtons at 630
handles = guidata(hObject);

Error in ==> TestGUI>ExecutePlotPushButton_Callback at 458
disableButtons(handles);

Error in ==> gui_mainfcn at 96
feval(varargin{:});

Error in ==> TestGUI at 38
gui_mainfcn(gui_State, varargin{:});

Error in ==>
guidemfile>@(hObject,eventdata)TestGUI(’ExecutePlotPushButton_Callback’,hObject,eventdata,guidata(hObject))

??? Error while evaluating uicontrol Callback

I have a main GUI (TestGUI) with several functions being called from it.

Any ideas what the problem might be?

Thanks,
Keith
on 04 Dec 2008 at 4:52 pm 17keith

PS. There must be a Murphy’s Law about this. After beating my head against this on and off for a couple of days, I found the problem minutes after posting my question.

The problem was that I was updating the handles variable within the disablebutton function and Matlab didn’t like that.

Thanks.
Keith
on 04 Dec 2008 at 6:12 pm 18Quan Quach

hey keith,

glad you figured it out. I was about to answer your query too!

Quan
on 02 Mar 2009 at 12:57 pm 19Moddy

I have a question, I built a GUI to do statical analysis and i would like to save the results in txt file or as xls file
on 02 Mar 2009 at 4:21 pm 20Daniel

@ Moddy

You can implement a ’save’ pushbutton if you like. For callback you simply just need to invoke the function save.

The documentation on save is actually pretty good.
```
doc save
```
should tell you plenty on the options you can use
on 02 Jul 2009 at 10:49 am 21Marc

1) I am looking to disable (but not delete) a few entries in a listbox. Is this possible? Thanks.

2) This site is great! Matlab help is generally good, but the tutorials here are always fill in the gaps for me. So thanks!
on 05 Jul 2009 at 8:54 am 22Amara

var=get(handles.edit1,’String’)
curs = exec(conn, ['select cin from detailpatient where nom=''', var, ''''])
curs=fetch(curs)

i have problem in the program above in the select query ???
please I need help

on 20 Oct 2009 at 5:24 am 23David Mann

An easy way to disable all buttons:

 
set(findobj('Style','PushButton'),'Enable','off');

And, then to enable

 
set(findobj('Style','PushButton'),'Enable','on');

on 20 Oct 2009 at 1:00 pm 24Ana

You have saved my life (and lots of time) so many times!!!
Thank you sooo much!!

Include MATLAB code in your comment by doing the following:

<pre lang="MATLAB">

%insert code here

</pre>

blinkdagger