Matlab mapping toolbox and the wmmarker function: how to change “description” from a web page to a file on the computer?

I use the following matlab code to mark a point on a web map:

    close all
    webmap('World Imagery');
    
    stationName  = 'ST01';
    description  = '<a href="https://www.mathworks.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://www.mathworks.com</a>';   
    lat          = 69.601142;
    lon          = 30.025769;
    color        = [0, 1, 0];
    
    wmmarker(lat,lon,...
        'FeatureName',stationName,...
        'Description',description,...
        'Color',color,...
        'AutoFit',true);

The mark is clickable, with a lable containing station name and description of the point. In this minimum working example the description is an url.

How can I format the description variable to point to an image file on my pc?

Answer 1

[Hank]

According to the documentation page on wmmarker, "Description elements can be either plain text or HTML markup." HTML links to local files look like this:

<a href="file:///C:\path\to\file">Link Text</a>

So set your description as the HTML code and pass it to wmmarker just like you did:

webmap('World Imagery');

stationName  = 'ST01';
description  = '<a href="file:///C:\path\to\file">CLICKY</a>';   
lat          = 69.601142;
lon          = 30.025769;
color        = [0, 1, 0];

wmmarker(lat,lon,...
         'FeatureName',stationName,...
         'Description',description,...
         'Color',color,...
         'AutoFit',true);

Its possible your system will attempt to open the file in a browser, which might be weird depending on what you're trying to open.

[Espen Donali]

Thanks a lot. How would the file path look if it was releative to my working directory, instead of absolute, as in your answer?

[Espen Donali]

The discription is shown on the label as a blue undrlined link, but nothing happends when trying to click it.

Answer 2

[Hank]

I found the answer! I stumbled across this

https://blogs.mathworks.com/community/2007/07/09/printing-hyperlinks-to-the-command-window/

I was wrong about the file path. The article says html links accept only http:// or matlab: protocols, the latter runs the matlab code written. So do this!

if you're on windows:

description = '<a href="matlab: winopen(''rel\path\to\file'')">CLICKY</a>'

and if you're on mac/linux

description = '<a href="matlab: unix(''xdg-open rel\path\to\file'')">CLICKY</a>'

Note, the doubled single quotes are used to escape the single quotes... read about it.

The linux bash command to open a file with the default application is xdg-open.

I hope that works! I'm not able to test it with the mapping toolbox, because I don't have it, but it worked printing links to the command line like

disp('<a href="matlab: winopen(''doc.pdf'')">CLICKY</a>')

[Espen Donali]

Hi again, and thanks a lot for your efforts to help me!

Your solution works perfect in my command line as you demonstrated, but not in the web map. I have already asked a new question on this in the community. So in the command line my file was opened in a separate jpg window, but when clicking on the link on the map lable, the link does not open the same jpg file. It could be a bug within the mapping toolbox?

Never the less, your link functioned as html :)