Programmatically run and export live script

I have a set of live scripts that I can save as html and publish for a client to inspect. Right now, I do that by opening one script at a time, hitting F5, and then clicking Save As >> html to save it. I'd like to automate that process. I was hoping publish('script.mlx','html') would work, but it doesn't seem to. I can save the *.mlx as .m and publish that, but it changes the layout and formatting, and I'd like to keep those.

Answer 1

[Baptiste Ottino]

Hi, I'm late to the party, but I spent hours and hours on this issue, and by pure luck I just found the answer. So in hope someone reads this, here is the function you are looking for. It certainly is the one called by the "Save As" button.

doc matlab.internal.richeditor.openAndConvert

Best regards.

[Martin Roempert]

In R2017a it is:

matlab.internal.liveeditor.openAndConvert(inputFile, outputFile);

[Baptiste Ottino]

Thanks. I should have wirtten that I use R2016b.

[Toby Driscoll]

This is a great tip! But while I get the liveeditor.openAndConvert to run fine in 2017b, the richeditor version leads to a command-not-found error.

[Christopher Coello]

Have tried to find this solution for long... Thanks Baptiste, works like a charm on 2017b.

[Simon Parten]

Rich editor renamed to liveeditor I think from 2017b onwards.

[Timothy Koehler]

That option does work for saving the live script. The LiveScripts save their state, though, so in order to programmatically update them, I would think to use the following two commands:

matlab.internal.liveeditor.executeAndSave(filename);
matlab.internal.liveeditor.openAndConvert(filename,'report.pdf');

The second command works fine, but the first command yields:

Error using matlab.internal.liveeditor.LiveEditorUtilities.execute (line 12)
Java exception occurred:
java.io.IOException: java.lang.RuntimeException: LIveCodeFileReader cannot find package to open

    at com.mathworks.services.mlx.MlxFileUtils.getCode(MlxFileUtils.java:183)

Any advice, or is there an alternate way to execute the live script?

[Jianyong Wen]

try this way:

import matlab.internal.liveeditor.LiveEditorUtilities
[javaRichDocument, cleanupObj, executionTime] = LiveEditorUtilities.openAndExecute(which(filename));
LiveEditorUtilities.saveas(javaRichDocument, 'report.pdf');

[Timothy Koehler]

That option resulted in a timeout when trying to run the saveas() function.

However; you gave me a path to the right solution! If I simply use:

matlab.internal.liveeditor.executeAndSave(which(filename));

instead of

matlab.internal.liveeditor.executeAndSave(filename);

, then the executeAndSave command will work. Apparently, it needs the full path to the .mlx file. Once that command completes, the openAndConvert() function works properly to generate the report.

Thanks for putting me on the right path.

[Jana Pecke]

hallo everybody,

i tried this in Matlab 2020a:

matlab.internal.liveeditor.executeAndSave(which('Handout.mlx'));
matlab.internal.liveeditor.openAndConvert('Handout.mlx', 'test.pdf');

but i get every time a pdf with my designed live script as well the code.

Do you have an idea, why this function also plot the code?

[Jared Augsburger]

See the bottom section of this documenation (Share Live Scripts and Functions). While it doesn't describe how to programatically control the plotting of the code, it does describe how to do this using the live script GUI.

[Jesse Desterro]

You can use:

mlxloc = strcat(pwd,'\filename.mlx');
fileout = strcat(pwd,'\example.docx');
matlab.internal.liveeditor.openAndConvert(mlxloc,fileout);

[Andrew Janke]

You da bomb! This helped me out a lot.

[Harry van der Pol]

As an addition to the answer of Jesse Desterro

In stead of using strcat, use the function fullfile to make the script run as well on Window like systems as on Unix systems. So instead of

mlxloc = strcat(pwd,'\filename.mlx');

use

mlxloc = fullfile(pwd,'filename.mlx');

Answer 2

[刘 成]

NOW, we can use export introduced in MATLAB R2022a.

export("myscript.mlx")

NOTE: if run this in GITHUB hosted runner, some problem may happen