GUIDE GUI export data to Excel

Hello,

I've created a GUI in GUIDE and on the push of a button, I want to transfer data saved within the MATLAB 'base' workspace to an Excel file. I'm aware I can do this from the command window using the following code:

    xlswrite('Vehicle_Data_', velocity_data, 'Sheet 1', 'A1')

However, how do I implement this within my pushbutton callback shown below:

% --- Executes on button press in pushbutton12.
function pushbutton12_Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)
% hObject    handle to pushbutton12 (see GCBO)
% eventdata  reserved - to be defined in a future version of MATLAB
% handles    structure with handles and user data (see GUIDATA)

Ideally, an example would be a massive help!

Thanks,

Craig

[Stephen23]

"I want to transfer data saved within the MATLAB 'base' workspace to an Excel file"

Magically grabbing data from another workspace and magically accessing variable names is one way that beginners force themselves into writing slow, complex, buggy code which is hard to debug. The best solution is to pass that data properly as input/output arguments, exactly as the MATLAB documentation recommends:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/share-data-between-workspaces.html

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating_guis/share-data-among-callbacks.html

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

evalin()

From your bushbutton callback you can evaluate the expression from the base workspace. If you get stuck, follow-up and I can help.

[Craig Saunders]

Hi Adam, Thanks for your answer. Ideally, i would like to push a button on my GUI, and then it'll save data which was stored from a simulink simulation to an Excel file.

My simulation transfers this data to the workspace, however i just need to find a way of using

xlswrite

to then send this data to Excel.

[Adam Danz]

Yep, that's what I understood. evalin() is a solution.

One option is to get the needed data from the workspace and transfer it to your callback function using evalin. Then you can call xlswrite() from the callback function.

Here's an example of getting the variable named 'myVar' from the workspace to the callback function. You would grab all of your needed variables and then call xlswrite().

% (from callback function)
myVar = evalin('base', 'myVar');

The second option is to call xlswrite() from the base workspace (using evalin).

Here's how that might look.

% (from callback function)
evalString = 'xlswrite(''Vehicle_Data_'', velocity_data, ''Sheet 1'', ''A1'')'; 
evalin('base', evalString)

[Craig Saunders]

Absolutely spot on, Adam. Thank you.

[Craig Saunders]

On a quick note, if i wanted to export multiple data sets such as 'force_data', 'distance_data' ... etc - how would this be done?

Thank you.

[Adam Danz]

You could do it the same way you did with the velocity_data. You could do that in a loop and write each variable to a new sheet... something like this

Not tested

exportVars = {'velocity_data', 'force_data', 'distance_data'}; 
for i = 1:length(exportvars)
  evalString = sprintf('''xlswrite(''Vehicle_Data'', %s, %s, ''A1''', exportVars{i}, sprintf('''Sheet %d''', i))
  myVar = evalin('base', evalString);
end

[Craig Saunders]

Excellent, just what I needed - thank you!