MATLAB: How to pass a function workspace into a guidata handles structure in a GUI

callbacksguiguidatapass variables

Hi guys, I have a function called within a GUI structure callback built with GUIDE that produces a significant number of variables in that function's workspace, and I'd like to use guidata to pass a structure of workspace variables to other callbacks but I can't get the syntax right. In the GUI's opening function I've defined a handles structure called handles.Drive in which I'd like to store the structure:
% --- Executes just before GUIv01b is made visible.
function GUIv01b_OpeningFcn(hObject, eventdata, handles, varargin)
% This function has no output args, see OutputFcn.
% hObject    handle to figure
% eventdata  reserved - to be defined in a future version of MATLAB

% handles    structure with handles and user data (see GUIDATA)

% varargin   command line arguments to GUIv01b (see VARARGIN)
% Choose default command line output for GUIv01b
handles.output = hObject;
%Create handles structure to store all data gererated by Drive_Matlab.m
handles.Drive = hObject;
% Update handles structure
guidata(hObject, handles);
Later the callback containing the function is called, and it's the workspace variables produced from a script called Drive_Matlab that I want to pass to handles.Drive:
% --- Executes on button press in GUILoadXLSXFile.
function GUILoadXLSXFile_Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)
% hObject    handle to GUILoadXLSXFile (see GCBO)
% eventdata  reserved - to be defined in a future version of MATLAB
% handles    structure with handles and user data (see GUIDATA)
clearvars except (hObject,eventdata,handles);
clear handles.GUIThreatTable.Data;
clear handles.STSProfileDataTable.Data;
clear handles.PlotData, 'Data';
cla reset;
Drive_Matlab; %Assign all workspace variables to handles.Drive
save Drive;
handles.Drive = load(Drive);
guidata(hObject,handles);
The code above represents an attempt to save all workspace variables as Drive.mat and then pull that into the handles structure, but that doesn't seem to work either. A question that just occurred to me: do I need to populate the handles structure handles.Drive from within the function that generates the variables, or is it sufficient to do it from within the GUI callback that contains the call to the function?
Thanks, Jason

Best Answer

Why don't you convert Drive_Matlab to a function that returns its variable as fields of a struct? You can put the save/load trick in that script (now function), or better yet, replace it by a more robust method that doesn't rely on the very slow method of writing to disk and reading from disk.
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