Table header borders old uitable matlab

Question

For performance reasons I am using old version of uitable in Matlab. I am trying to change the cell-border-color of the table header. At present two column header cells are indistinguishable from each other. I have tried the following:

Custom column renderer but still can't change the table header border. The following seems to work but borders the entire header rather than table header cells.

h_old=uitable('v0','data',magic(5),'position',[5,5,550,400]);
set(h_old,'Units','normalized');
% get the underlying java table
jtable=h_old.getTable;
% get table header
theader=jtable.getTableHeader;
% set intended color 
color=java.awt.Color(9471874);
% create a line border
theaderborder=javax.swing.BorderFactory.createLineBorder(color);
% set it in table header
theader.setBorder(theaderborder);

This sets border around entire header but not in cells. Any one know how to do that?

For changing jtable grid (table cells border), I can do jtable.setGridColor(color). I am looking for equivalent but for table header cells.

Thanks, Amit

Answer 1

You need to do a tiny bit of java coding. You need to implement custom cell renderer by extending DefaultTableCellRenderer. Since you can't write in-line java code in Matlab, you need to package this class in a jar and add to java path.

The class you need should look something like this:

public class CustomBorderCellRenderer extends DefaultTableCellRenderer {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    private Color borderColor;

    public CustomBorderCellRenderer(Color borderColor) {
        this.borderColor = borderColor;
    }

    @Override
    public Component getTableCellRendererComponent(JTable table, Object value, boolean isSelected, boolean hasFocus, int row, int column) {
        JComponent component = (JComponent) super.getTableCellRendererComponent(table, value, isSelected, hasFocus, row, column);
        ((JLabel) component).setHorizontalAlignment(JLabel.CENTER);
        component.setBorder(BorderFactory.createLineBorder(borderColor));
        return component;
    }
}

Note that it overrides some of the default appearance, so apart from setting border color, you might want to customize background color etc. As an example I also center the header labels, which would otherwise appear on the left.

Once you package and load the jar, the usage is straightforward:

javaaddpath('Path\to\YourJar.jar');
figure();
hTable = uitable('v0', 'data', magic(5), 'position', [5,5,550,400]);
set(hTable, 'Units', 'normalized');
borderColor = java.awt.Color(1,0,0);
renderer = CustomBorderCellRenderer(borderColor);
header = hTable.getTable().getTableHeader();
header.setDefaultRenderer(renderer);

You might also need to trigger the table to repaint itself, e.g. using drawnow.