barh with colored bars: differences between 2012b and 2014b

hi,

I have a problem with the function barh when upgrading from MATLAB 2012b to MATLAB2014b.

I have the following function

function [ h ] = barh_colored(phi,cmin,cmax,loglinear)
%UNTITLED Summary of this function goes here
%   Detailed explanation goes here
  nbars2 = 64;
  if cmax ~= -1
      xbars=cmin:(cmax-cmin)/(nbars2-1):cmax;
      [counts,x] = hist(phi, xbars);
  else
      [counts,x] = hist(phi, nbars2);
  end
  if strcmp(loglinear,'log')
      h = barh(x,log10(counts),1);
  else
      h = barh(x,counts,1);
  end
  set(gca,'YAxisLocation','right');
  ch = get(h,'Children');
  fvd = get(ch,'Faces');
  fvcd = get(ch,'FaceVertexCData');
  cmap=get(gcf,'Colormap');
  colormap(cmap);
  for i=1:nbars2
      fvcd(fvd(i,:))=i;
  end
  set(ch,'FaceVertexCData',fvcd)
  if cmax ~= -1
      ylim([cmin cmax]);
  end
end

This code works fine with MATLAB 2012b. It generates plots like this:

Recently I switched to MATLAB 2014b and the code does not work anymore. Reason is that barh object does not have Children anymore so that:

ch = get(h,'Children');

returns an empty GraphicsPlaceHolder object.

How can I solve this?

Dany Benoy

Answer 1

[Doug Hull]

The Bar properties of Children is no longer available.

This is along the lines of what you want to accomplish:

bar([1 nan nan], 'facecolor',[1 0 0])
hold on
bar([nan 2 nan], 'facecolor',[0 1 0])
bar([nan nan 3], 'facecolor',[0 0 1])
hold off

[D. benoy]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the answer. I upated my function to

function barh_colored(phi)
    nbars2 = 64;
    cmap=get(gcf,'Colormap');
    [counts,x] = hist(phi, nbars2);
    y = NaN * ones(1,nbars2);
    for i=1:nbars2
        y1 = y;
        y1(i) = counts(i);
        barh(x,y1,'BarWidth',1,...
            'facecolor',cmap(i,:));
        if i == 1,hold on, end
    end
    set(gca,'YAxisLocation','right');
end

Dany Benoy

Answer 2

[matt dash]

I ran into this exact same problem. I solved it by writing my own bar function that constructs bars out of patches and wraps them with an hggroup, so the output is completely compatible with the way bar used to work. It's not very difficult, especially if you don't need any of the advanced features like stacking/grouping bars.

(Sorry i know this isn't the most useful answer, but something to think about)

I'm mostly a big fan of the new graphics, but bar seems to have really gone downhill. My real problem was the AWFULLY slow limit checking method that runs any time you resize a bar graph... nearly makes them unusable in large numbers (subplots etc).