how to test if toolbox exists?

I am writings some code that I wish to distribute open source. Within my code, I'd like to check if the end-users have fsolve in their installation and if not, use fzero. I'd rather the end-user not get ugly messages about functions not existing, and beginners will be so confused about what to do to fix the error, or they will hate Matlab. Is there a way that this can be implemented easily?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/license.html

For example,

license('test', 'image_toolbox')

[Mohammad Nazrin Jumali]

it says '1', what does it mean?

[Walter Roberson]

It means the license does exist.

Answer 2

[Geoff]

Try this:

v = ver;
has_fsolve = any(strcmp(cellstr(char(v.Name)), 'Optimization Toolbox'));

Or more specifically:

has_fsolve = ~isempty(which('fsolve'));

[Jan]

{v.Name} is nicer than "cellstr(char(v.Name))".

[Geoff]

Oh, thanks =) I get a bit baffled sometimes when things look like the right type but return multiple answers. That's a much nicer syntax.

Answer 3

[Image Analyst]

Here's the code I use:

% Check that user has the Image Processing Toolbox installed.
hasIPT = license('test', 'image_toolbox');
if ~hasIPT
  % User does not have the toolbox installed.
  message = sprintf('Sorry, but you do not seem to have the Image Processing Toolbox.\nDo you want to try to continue anyway?');
  reply = questdlg(message, 'Toolbox missing', 'Yes', 'No', 'Yes');
  if strcmpi(reply, 'No')
    % User said No, so exit.
    return;
  end
end

You'll need to adapt it for any toolboxes that you want to check.

Answer 4

[Reza Ahmadzadeh]

You can use the existing function in FileExchange called isToolboxAvailable . The usage is as follows:

result = isToolboxAvailable('image processing toolbox','error');

[Kjartan Andersen]

Not a good idea to have an external functionality to check for dependencies. What if the user doesn't have this tool?