MATLAB: Can I embed another application’s document in a MATLAB figure window

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Can I embed another application's documents (such as Excel worksheet) in a MATLAB figure window? What about web pages? Can I embed arbitrary documents?

Best Answer

Excel does not have an ActiveX control but does allow its documents to be embedded into MATLAB figure windows through the use of ActiveX document serving. These documents can be embedded by using the Shell.Explorer ActiveX control.

Here is how to embed an Excel workbook into a figure window:

figure ('pos', [100 100 780 420])
hBrowser = actxcontrol ('Shell.Explorer', [0 0 780 420]);
invoke (hBrowser, 'Navigate', 'file://d:\tmp\myexcel.xls');

You can also embed web pages into the figure window:

figure ('pos', [100 100 780 420])
hBrowser = actxcontrol ('Shell.Explorer', [0 0 780 420]);
url = ['www.mathworks.com'];
invoke (hBrowser, 'Navigate', url);

Check your application's documentation to see if it is an ActiveX document server. Any of these documents should be embeddable in a MATLAB figure window using the Shell.Explorer control.

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Tab Key Disabled in Embedded Browser

So, after consulting with MathWorks (thank you!) it appears that this is a known problem in working with ActiveX webBrowser components (and not just in Matlab). Currently, there is no native Matlab solution. However, Yair Altman's ever-helpful Undocumented Matlab site provides a workaround using Java.

While this overcomes the tab key limitations, my hang-up in using this solution has been my own ignorance in accessing web components (e.g., a text box, etc.) via code. But, as long as one is using R2015a or later, it turns out that this is relatively straight-forward:

% Create figure
fig = figure('Pos', [0 0 1280 1024], 'Name', 'Browser Test', 'Units', 'norm', 'Menu', 'none');
movegui(fig, 'center');
% Add Browser object
jObject = com.mathworks.mlwidgets.html.HTMLBrowserPanel;
[browserPanel, container] = javacomponent(jObject, [], fig);
set(container, 'Units', 'norm', 'Pos', [0,0,1,1]);
% Navigate to a URL
browserPanel.setCurrentLocation('https://www.mathworks.com/login');
% Get JxBrowser BrowserView and Browser objects
if verLessThan('matlab', '8.6')
    error('JxBrowser BrowserView is not available in MATLAB R2015a or earlier');
elseif verLessThan('matlab', '9.1')
    browserView = browserPanel.getComponent(0).getComponent(0).getComponent(0).getComponent(0);
else
    browserView = browserPanel.getComponent(0).getComponent(0).getComponent(0);
end
browser = browserView.getBrowser();
% Wait until browser finishes loading
while browser.isLoading
    pause(0.1);
end
% The login form is in a frame on this page. The frame id with the login form is 4
frameDocument = browser.getDocument(4);
% Example: Get the "userId" field and fill it with the text "testId"
userId = [];
while isempty(userId)
    % It is possible that the content of the embedded frame has not 
    % finished loading yet. This loop will ensure that we wait until it 
    % finishes loading the userId field.
    userId = frameDocument.findElement(com.teamdev.jxbrowser.chromium.dom.By.id('userId'));
    pause(0.1);
end
userId.setValue('testId');
% Example: Get submit button and click it
submit = frameDocument.findElement(com.teamdev.jxbrowser.chromium.dom.By.id('submit'));
%submit.click();    % commented out because this is not a valid login

(This isn't my genius; I credit the MathWorks support team for helping to point me on the right path...)

MATLAB: MATLAB code to read status update message appearing in the web page (Internet Explorer in MATLAB GUI)

Use event handlers to the actxcontrol object. rewrite the code statement in the MATLAB command window as

h = actxcontrol('Shell.Explorer.2',[5, 150, 5000, 575], gcf);

then type h.events to know about the events associated with this object

Then register appropriate event and write a function for that event.

More details are available in the following link http://in.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/using-events.html

Please reply if anybody has tried writing eventhandle function for the Shell.Explorer.2

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Tab Key Disabled in Embedded Browser

MATLAB: MATLAB code to read status update message appearing in the web page (Internet Explorer in MATLAB GUI)

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