Matlab’s built-in editor, like most other Matlab GUI, is Java-based. As such, it can easily be accessed programmatically. ImageAnalyst, a well-respected member of the Matlab community and a frequent CSSM (newsgroup) and FEX (File Exchange) contributor, recently asked whether it is possible to retrieve the name of the Editor’s currently edited file. The answer is that this is very easy, but I decided to use this opportunity to show how other interesting things can be done with the Editor.
Before we start, it should be made clear that this entire article relies on MathWorks internal implementation of the Editor and Desktop, which may change without prior notice in future Matlab releases. The code below appears to work under Matlab 6 & 7, but users who rely on forward compatibility should be aware of this warning.
We start by retrieving the Editor handle. This can be done in a number of ways. The easiest is via the Matlab desktop:
try % Matlab 7 desktop = com.mathworks.mde.desk.MLDesktop.getInstance; jEditor = desktop.getGroupContainer('Editor').getTopLevelAncestor; % we get a com.mathworks.mde.desk.MLMultipleClientFrame object catch % Matlab 6 % Unfortunately, we can't get the Editor handle from the Desktop handle in Matlab 6: %desktop = com.mathworks.ide.desktop.MLDesktop.getMLDesktop; % So here's the workaround for Matlab 6: openDocs = com.mathworks.ide.editor.EditorApplication.getOpenDocuments; % a java.util.Vector firstDoc = openDocs.elementAt(0); % a com.mathworks.ide.editor.EditorViewContainer object jEditor = firstDoc.getParent.getParent.getParent; % we get a com.mathworks.mwt.MWTabPanel or com.mathworks.ide.desktop.DTContainer object end
Now that we have the Editor handle, let’s retrieve its currently open (active) file name from the Editor’s title:
title = jEditor.getTitle; currentFilename = char(title.replaceFirst('Editor - ',''));
The entire list of open file names can be retrieved in several ways:
% Alternative #1: edhandle = com.mathworks.mlservices.MLEditorServices; allEditorFilenames = char(edhandle.builtinGetOpenDocumentNames); % Alternative #2: openFiles = desktop.getWindowRegistry.getClosers.toArray.cell; allEditorFilenames = cellfun(@(c)c.getTitle.char,openFiles,'un',0);
At the top-level Editor-window level, we can prevent its resizing, update its status bar, modify its toolbar/menu-bar, control docking and do other similar fun things:
% Actions via built-in methods: jEditor.setResizable(0); jEditor.setStatusText('testing 123...'); jEditor.setTitle('This is the Matlab Editor'); % Equivalent actions via properties: set(jEditor, 'Resizable', 'off'); set(jEditor, 'StatusText', 'testing 123...'); set(jEditor, 'Title', 'This is the Matlab Editor');
Actually, the jEditor handle has over 300 invokable methods and close to 200 properties that we can get/set. Perhaps the easiest way to find interesting things we can programmatically do with the Editor handle, is to use my UIInspect utility on the File Exchange:
uiinspect(jEditor); % or: jEditor.uiinspect
Matlab Editor methods, callbacks and properties as seen by uiinspect
(click to zoom)
The Editor handle is actually a container for many internal panels (toolbars etc.) and documents. The entire object hierarchy can be seen with another of my File Exchange utilities, FindJObj:
findjobj(jEditor); % or: jEditor.findjobj
Matlab Editor object hierarchy as seen by findjboj (click to zoom)
We can modify text within the open Editor documents, and instrument these document to handle event callbacks. To see how, I refer users to my EditorMacro utility on the Matlab File Exchange.
If you find some other nifty and/or useful things that can be done using the Editor handle, please post them in the comments section below.
Related posts:
- EditorMacro – assign a keyboard macro in the Matlab editor EditorMacro is a new utility that enables setting keyboard macros in the Matlab editor. this post details its inner workings....
- Non-textual editor actions The UIINSPECT utility can be used to expand EditorMacro capabilities to non-text-insertion actions. This is how:...
- Accessing plot brushed data Plot data brushing can be accessed programmatically using very simple pure-Matlab code...
- Recovering previous editor state Recovering the previous state of the Matlab editor and its loaded documents is possible using a built-in backup config file. ...
- Setting the Matlab desktop layout programmatically The Matlab desktop enables saving and switching layouts using the main menu. This post shows how to do so programmatically....
- R2009b keyboard bindings The new Matlab release R2009b includes the ability to customize keyboard bindings for the editor and Command Window. However, there are still some uses for the EditorMacro utility and its variants....
To close all M-files in the editor, I use:
@Aurélien, in MATLAB >= R2009b you can try
editorservices.closeGroupAnd to leave the group up and just close all the open editors
For more about the “less undocumented” way to access the editor, see my new post:
http://blogs.mathworks.com/desktop/2009/10/26/the-matlab-editor-at-your-fingertips/
Do you know how can I find the bookmarks in the editor? I would like to get all bookmarks and save them on closing Matlab, so that on reopening, they could be restored.
Thx
Ruben – that was a hard question that kept me digging for hours. I discovered (via the FindJObj utility) that the bookmarks are displayed in a panel called ‘ExecutionArrowDisplay’ of class com.mathworks.mde.editor.ExecutionArrowDisplay$ExecutionPanel. I do not know whether the list of bookmarks are contained within this object, although I suspect they are. In any case, I did not find a method to programmatically retrieve this list since the ExecutionPanel object does not expose any method to do so.
So, the only way I could find is to loop over all the editor’s open files, and invoke the editor’s default action for <F2> (which is the ‘next-bookmark’ action reported by the EditorMacro utility) in a loop until you detect coming back to an earlier line number. It’s ugly, but it should work. The reverse, setting bookmarks, could be done in a similar fashion, using the ‘toggle-bookmark’ action.
I think it could be a great File Exchange utility. Care to try it? If you get stuck I can help out.
My editor window is docked and that stops title being the ‘Editor – ‘… form. I wanted to get the active document so I could invoke a command to open the directory of the current editor’s file.
Thanks to Aurélien I discovered the following to get the current editor’s file path:
For anyone interested, Jan Simon has just posted a few more useful things that can be done using the Editor handle:
Bring the editor to front:
jEditor.toFront;Is the editor active currently:
jEditor.isActive;Perform an action whenever the user activate the editor:
Or the usual function handle callback style.
See further properties:
and
This does not work on my Matlab 6.5.1, WinXP SP3, JavaVM 1.3.1_01
There is no getOpenDocuments method for the EditorApplication.
The solution is trivial: Do not use Matlab 6.5… Thanks, Jan
@Jan – I’m willing to bet that the solution for 6.5 is simply a variant of the Matlab 6 syntax. Try to run the following command in Matlab 6.5 to check whether the getOpenDocuments() method was renamed:
Nope. The EditorApplication knows: closeAll, closeDocument, equals, getClass, hashCode, isDocumentDirty, isStandalone, main, newDocument, newDocumentWithString, notify, notifyAll, openDocument, openDocumentToFunction, openDocumentToLine, reloadDocument, saveDocument, showJitZones (what’s that?!), toString and wait.
Surprising. Jan
Hi Yair!,
thank you for the undocumented stuff! really great!
Now i have one question: would it be possible to add a uitree to the editor? It would be great to browse through the opened files which are grouped by “projects” or something, especially if you opened large number of files…better than then a simple list.
Greeting form Germany,
Chris
@Christian – you can’t [easily] add a tree to the Editor, but you can create a simple tree in a regular Matlab figure (use the built-in uitree function), set the node callbacks to something like: edit(filename) and then dock this figure into the Editor (yes I know this sounds a bit strange) using my setFigDockGroup utility.
Hi,
I sent this question on MATLAB central but received no answer, so I post it here again in case you’ve not seen it!
I have a time tracking software that records the time I spend on each application. It recognizes the applications by their window caption. I’m used to have the MATLAB editor docked into the main window, so all my working time in MATLAB is reported under the name of “MATLAB 7.8.0 (2009a)”. I’m thinking of a way to change the main window title to the name of the document I’m currently working on. Thanks to undocumentedmatlab.com now I know how to get the name of the active document and how to change the window title by accessing related java components. What I need is to code a callback function to be triggered whenever I switch to another document in the editor. However I didn’t find the right callback property. Any idea?
P.S. What I said I know works when the editor is undocked which is not what I’m looking for! So I correct that: I don’t even know how to get the title of the active document in the editor when the editor is docked into the main window
Hi Yair,
as for MATLAB 7.11 the code
does not work anymore. Do you know any workaround?
Thank you for your constant efforts digging out the internals of MATLAB and sharing them with us.
Ralf.
@Ralf – in R2010b (Matlab 7.11), the Java class interface has changed. In R2010b, we get the editor handle as follows:
The method names and parameters have also changed from those of the pre-R2010b Java class. Each edited document now has a separate com.mathworks.mde.editor.MatlabEditor object. The jEditorApp.getActiveEditor() method returns the MatlabEditor object for the currently-edited document; the other documents can be retrieved using jEditorApp.getOpenEditors(), which returns a java.util.Collections.UnmodifiableList of such MatlabEditors.
Once you get your desired document (a MatlabEditor reference), its functionality can be accessed via its MatlabEditor’s methods (bringToFront(), close(), goToLine(…), reload(), replaceText(…), setEditable(…) etc.) or properties (e.g. CaretPosition, Document, Language, Length, LongName, ShortName, Selection, Text, etc.). I suggest using my CheckClass or UIInspect utilities if you want additional information about the supported properties, callbacks and methods. I may also post about this in the upcoming months, since it needs much more space than a simple comment here, so stay tuned.
Of course, you can always continue to use the partially-documented/supported editorservices object that Mike Katz introduced last year (see his comment above).
-Yair
Hi Yair,
Thanks a lot for undocumented matlab articles, those are really helpful.
I’m trying to build a GUI which has matlab editor in the figure. Currently I can use following program to show the editor in my GUE
but, a blank editor window still remains open, and when I close that window, the program displayed in the matlab figure is also closed. Is there any other way I can bring the editor in a matlab figure? I think this is not impossible because the GUI of s-function editor block in simulink has that facility.
Thanks
-Punit
@Punit – instead of re-parenting the Editor document as you had attempted, why not use one of the simpler options suggested in http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/syntax-highlighted-labels-panels/?
-Yair
Hi Yair,
Thanks a lot. That article is really helpful
-Punit
Hi
Would it be possible to add functionality to the context menu? I would like to be able to evaluate a function with the selected text as input, i.e size() of the variable i right-clicked on.
K
hi, Yair Altman, i want to add a run function of VBScript codes in the editor, now i just make a shortcut in the matlab desktop like this. can you give me some help? thanks a lot!
@Rex – Windows shortcuts cannot be run via the dos function, as far as I know. Instead, you need to refer to the actual file location (not a shortcut). Also, you might need to use winopen rather than dos.
Hi, Yair
This function works. I want to add a button to the Editor, with the same function. Or change the function of “Run” button.