Is it possible to use .NET application in MatLab?

Question

I feel at home in C# and I'll design a console application that will fetch some data from a web service. I'd like to allow a group of scientists to use the data in MatLab. One way to achieve that is to store it in a file on the HDD and then load the contents of it into MatLab.

That got me thinking, though. Is it possible to create a function in MatLab that calls an EXE created in C# so my scientific friends can go:

a = GetMeSomeData()

and populate the variable a with the response of the service? (I would, of course, format the data using my C# code so it'll fit the matrix model of MatLab.)

I've done some googling before I start working on this but most of the stuff I've found is about an old version of MatLab (2007) and it's said something about creating a COM object.

Answer 1

You might want to take a look at this: Using .NET libraries in MATLAB .

There's plenty of documentation there.

Start with NET.addAssembly ('path-to-dll) , and then it seems you can just use the classes normally as you would in .NET.

You might also want to take a look at Using Arrays with .NET Applications .

Answer 2

You can easily call functions in a .NET assembly. First you have to tell Matlab what assembly you are going to use:

NET.addAssembly("path//to//assembly.dll");

After that, you just call functions in your m-files:

foo = Namespace.Class.FunctionFoo(input1, input2);
bar = Namespace.Class.FunctionBar(input1, input2);

You can even have multiple outputs. AC# function like this:

public void MultipleOut(int in1, int in2, out int out1, out int out2)
{ ... }

can be called like this in Matlab:

[out1, out2] = Namespace.Class.MultipleOut(in1, in2);

Answer 3

To answer the question directly, you can use the system command or ! in MATLAB to execute an external process. Once it returns you can read and parse the output from your MATLAB function. Wrap that all up in a MATLAB .m file and you have what you describe in the question.

Of course, you could just access the web service directly from MATLAB with createClassFromWsdl . And as others point out, NET.addAssembly allows you to import and use your .net assembly directly from MATLAB, which may be cleaner than parsing text file output.