MATLAB: Matlab GUI – Tabgroup visibility – checkbox

Question

Hi everyone, for a project in university i am creating a gui for an animation and i have a question.

I would like to activate and deactivate a tab group with a checkbox (by default it should be hidden).

During my research in the forum i came across the following:

(from Jorge Paloschi on 5 Jun 2020 at 16:41 – https://de.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/355804-app-designer-tab-groups)

• Create a dummy

tg = matlab.ui.container.TabGroup;

• Suppose your tab is in index 2, then do

app.TabGroup.Children(2).Parent = tg;

• After this the tab is not visible anymore
• To make it visible again do the opposite

tg.Children(1).Parent = app.TabGroup;

• The only remaining action is to permute the children of app.TabGroup so that the last Children goes back to index 2, and voila, visible again in the right order!

You might have to change the property name TabGroup to the one in your application if it is not the default Property name."

But I dont understand how it works and i want to disable all by default. Could anybode help me pls?

Answer 1

Control tab selectivity

As of r2020a, there isn't an option to set the visibility or 'enable' property of a tab. However, you can control which tabs can be selected according to a set of checkboxes via the use of a SelectionChangedFcn.

1. From App designer > Design View, right click the top of the Tab Group (not an individual Tab but the entire group). Go down to 'callbacks' and select "Add SelectionChangedFcn". This will add a function in Code View.
2. Within the SelectionChangedFcn, determine if the most recently selected tab is associated with a checked or un-checked checkbox. If checked (or unchecked), return the active tab to the previously selected tab. This will prevent the user from selecting tabs associated with checked (or unchecked) check boxes.

This demo restricts tab selection if the checkbox is checked. You can easily do the opposite by changing the conditional statement at the end of the function below.

The SelectionChangedFcn will look like this, below (the entire app is also attached).

% Selection change function: TabGroup
function TabGroupSelectionChanged(app, event)
% Determine which tab was selected
selectedTab = app.TabGroup.SelectedTab;
% Look up the value of the paired checkbox
% Each "case" is the title of a Tab and contains the pair checkbox.
switch selectedTab.Title
    case 'Tab'
        checkboxValue = app.CheckBox.Value;
    case 'Tab2'
        checkboxValue = app.CheckBox2.Value;
    case 'Tab3'
        checkboxValue = app.CheckBox3.Value;
    otherwise
        error('Unknown tab: %s.',selectedTab.Title)
end
% If paired checkbox is checked, return to the previously selected tab
if checkboxValue %   --OR--   if ~checkboxValue
    app.TabGroup.SelectedTab = event.OldValue;
end
end

To toggle the visibility of the entire Tab Group

Here are instructions that sets the visibility of the entire tab group based on a checkbox value.

1. From within app designer, add the tab group to the app.
2. Select the added tab group from the top (not the tab but the entire group) and then go to the component browser on the right. Under "Interactivity" you should see a checkbox for "Visible". If you want the default to be off, de-select that.
3. Add a check box.
4. Right click the checkbox, go down to "callbacks" and select "Add ValueChangedFcn". That will add a function in code-view.
5. The selected/de-selected value of the checkbox is stored in app.CheckBox.Value (or whatever your checkbox handle name is). Add the code below within that function. You'll need to substitute the app variables with your correct handle names.
6. Save the app and test it.

value = app.CheckBox.Value;
if value
    app.TabGroup.Visible = 'on'; 
else
    app.TabGroup.Visible = 'off';
end