How to click into the heatmap created inside a UI panel?

I’m working on building an interactive Heatmap in Matlab UI. I've added a UI Panel to the interface and populated the heatmap within the panel. Now that I know how to get the row and column upon clicking the Heatmap cell, the issue now is I’m not able to actually click into the heatmap within the UI Panel. I tried using the “WindowButtonDownFcn”, but was only able to click into any blank area within the UI Panel. When I click on the heatmap in the UI panel, there is no response at all.

May I know how I could click into the heatmap created inside the UI Panel? Thanks!

[Adam Danz]

Are you using the heatmap function to produce the heat map?

I sense that you are using a callback function to click the heatmap and return the row and column data. Is that correct? If so, could you share more about that, which callback and on what object?

[Yiling]

Hi Adam, what you sensed is correct! I've actually resolved this by applying a windowbuttondownfcn on the UI figure so that I can click on the heatmap within a ui panel on the ui figure. My current issue is, when the heatmap becomes bigger and bigger, it just scales itself to fit into the panel. What I want is that the heatmap won't change its column and row width, so when there are more rows, the panel will have a scoller that I can drag down. Now it looks like the heatmap label is sticking its position to the bottom and left edge of the ui panel.

Is there a solution you can think about? Does imagesc (which create image instead of a plot) better help with this?

[Adam Danz]

imagesc is a common alternative to heatmap. However, imagesc lacks many features in heatmap such as interactively sorting columns and labels, categorical zoom that snaps to edges, and the automatic labeling of cells.

Here's a demo on using imagesc to imitate heatmap

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/722079-generate-a-geographical-heat-map#answer_602491