Input and Output Arguments :: Programming GUIs (Creating Graphical User Interfaces)

Creating Graphical User Interfaces

Input and Output Arguments

The following examples illustrate various ways to call a GUI named my_gui with different arguments. All arguments are passed to the opening function in the GUI M-file.

Calling my_gui with no arguments opens my_gui.
Calling H = my_gui opens my_gui and returns the handle to my_gui.
Calling my_gui('Property', Value,...), where 'Property' is a valid figure property, opens my_gui using the given property-value pair. You can call the GUI with more than one property-value pair.

For example, my_gui('Position', [71.8 44.9 74.8 19.7]) opens the GUI at the specified position, since Position is a valid figure property. See the reference page for figure for a list of figure properties.

Calling my_gui('My_function', hObject, eventdata, handles,...) calls the subfunction My_function in the GUI M-file with the given input arguments.
Calling my_gui('Key_word', Value,...), where 'Key_word' is any string that is not a valid figure property or the name of a subfunction, creates a new my_gui, and passes the pair 'Key_word', Value to the opening function in the GUI M-file via varargin.

You can use this calling syntax to pass arguments that are not figure properties to the GUI. For example, my_gui('Temperature', 98.6) opens the GUI and passes the vector ['Temperature', 98.6] to the opening function.

See An Address Book Reader for an example that uses this syntax. The example creates a GUI called address_book. Calling the GUI with the syntax address_book('book', my_contacts) opens the GUI with the MAT-file my_contacts, which contains a list of names and addresses you want to display. Note that you can use any string that is not a valid figure property or the name of a callback in place of the string 'book'. See the reference page for figure for a list of figure properties.

Note If you call a GUI with multiple property value pairs, all the pairs that correspond to valid figure properties must precede all the pairs that do not correspond to valid figure properties in the sequence of arguments.

Callbacks Programming Callbacks for GUI Components