How do I mimic a button click in matlab

Question

How do I mimic a button click in matlab?

Simply excecuting the callback function doesn't work since within its callback it uses the gcbo command and I cannot alter the excecuting function. I furthermore would not like to shadow gcbo for obvious reasons.

In case it matters I look for a solution which works on matlab R2012a.

Answer 1

you can try calling the java.awt.Robot class, for example.

robot = java.awt.Robot;
pause(2) % wait some time
robot.keyPress (java.awt.event.KeyEvent.VK_ENTER); % press "enter" key
robot.keyRelease (java.awt.event.KeyEvent.VK_ENTER); %  release "enter" key

read more about GUI automation using a Robot here...

I'm not sure this will work on Matlab R2012a, but it does on later versions.

Answer 2

gcbo only contain the button handle. If you have (or can retrieve/find) the button handle, just call the function callback with the button handle as first argument and an empty variable as the second argument.

something looking like that:

button_callback( buttonHandle , [] ) ;

The callback will not make any difference between gcbo or the button handle and will function exactly the same.

---

If you do not have the button handle in the first place, you can try to find it with findobj:

buttonHandle  = findobj(gcf,'Style','PushButton','String','The Button Text')

Depending on how the GUI was built/defined, then handle visibility may not be immediately apparent, in which case you can search deeper with findall:

buttonHandle   = findall(gcf,'Style','PushButton','String','The Button Text')

or may be the handle was nicely saved in the guidata structure:

handles = guidata(gcf) ;

and search the structure for what may be your button handle.

Note: in the last 3 examples above, make sure the GUI figure which contains the button has the focus before you call gcf, or better yet, replace gcf by the actual figure handle.