New FSDA function: setupPythonEnv

[AldoCorbelliniUNIPR]

FSDA, starting from version 8.7.10.15 will include setupPythonEnv, a utility function designed to simplify the use of Python inside MATLAB.

The function detects a Python installation compatible with the current MATLAB release, configures pyenv automatically, and can also execute pip commands (the Python package manager) in the selected environment. Moreover, On macOS, it is also able to detect unsupported system interpreters such as the Python distributed with Xcode that is strictly reserved for OS maintenance.

This makes setupPythonEnv especially useful for users who need to install or manage Python packages required by MATLAB workflows, without leaving the MATLAB session.

Typical applications include:

• configuring a valid Python interpreter for MATLAB;
• installing required packages such as yfinance that is used by specific functions (e.g. getFundamentals);
• listing or checking the versions of installed Python packages;

setupPythonEnv is extremely flexible and supports all full fledged pip commands, while maintaining coherence with the FSDA style syntax.

Example usages are:

setupPythonEnv
setupPythonEnv('PipCommand','install yfinance')
setupPythonEnv('PipCommand','list')

The function also supports a compact syntax, so that:

setupPythonEnv('PipCommand','yfinance')

is automatically interpreted as an installation request.

Compatibility notes

From the code, the function is designed for:

• Windows

• macOS

and checks Python compatibility against MATLAB releases in the range R2021b through R2026a

If no compatible Python is found, the function informs the user and suggests installing a supported version.

[MarcoRianiUNIPR]

FSDA version 8.7.10.15 has just been released

[asad4022]

Thank you, Prof. Aldo, for briefly and concisely introducing the new function in this discussion. It is great to see the direct connection with what we covered during the lectures, especially in the time‑series module. Students can now explore these tools hands‑on, and I strongly encourage them to look for seasonality patterns — both short‑term and long‑term — to consolidate and deepen what they have learned.

[slemankfa]

Dear Corbellini,

First,Thanks for your great effort.

Since I am using Online MATLAB .
I could not used the function setupPythonEnv('PipCommand','install yfinance') , before I download the yfinance from Add-Ons I had this issue as it shown in the screenshot below :

But after I installed from Add-Ons and tried to run this code again I faced to this error now :

Again I am using Online MATLAB and Properly is stilling not supported..

Warm regards.

[matteozanettii]

Dear Professor Corbellini,

Thank you for introducing setupPythonEnv. This utility is a significant improvement for managing dependencies like yfinance directly from the MATLAB command line. It effectively addresses the environment configuration challenges that often arise when working with real-time financial data, I have personally struggled a bit to install this python function in the Matlab's python directory

On a related note, I am excited to share that I have just submitted my first Pull Request to the FSDA repository to integrate Bollinger plot visualization into the getYahoo top panel. I am committed to further testing these new features and contributing to the project to ensure the tools remain robust for technical and quantitative analysis.

I will be testing setupPythonEnv immediately to streamline into the workflow. Looking forward to seeing how these integrations evolve!

Best regards

[MarcoRianiUNIPR]

@matteozanettii First of all thank you very much.

You can find a review of your pull request at

UniprJRC/FSDA#116 (review)

---

To all: if you are able to have an accepted pull request by Google developers your life is going to change!

However, at a smaller scale see what @matteozanettii has done and his pull request.

@matteozanettii considering that you will be a future student of Data Science for Management, it seems to me you have done more than enough. I would like that all the other students could have your motivation!

[MarcoRianiUNIPR]

@slemankfa this is what we have just found

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/648773-installing-python-libraries-in-matlab-online

So we are going to incorporate this approach in our function which will be released in the version of FSDA

[matteozanettii]

Thank you very much for your kind words, @MarcoRianiUNIPR . The comparison to the standards of Google developers is a huge motivation for me.

As I look forward to my future studies in Data Science for Management, I believe that contributing to professional-grade projects like FSDA is the most effective way to bridge the gap between academic theory and real-world application. I am fully committed to maintaining this level of motivation and I truly appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this repository.

Ready for the next steps!

[slemankfa]

Dear Prof @MarcoRianiUNIPR ,

After the lecture I was thinking if I can do something and I will share with you my little attempt.

I am using ONLINE MATLAB and I tried to solve the issue as I am explained bellow :
Since I learned to not play with a code run very well so after checking the Error and having discussing in the class that ONLINE MATLAB is based on Linux, so , I did a little trick, which is doing a wrapper function and this Function called :
setupPythonEnvSafe - Smart wrapper around setupPythonEnv
Usage:
setupPythonEnvSafe('PipCommand', 'install yfinance')
setupPythonEnvSafe('PipCommand', 'install yfinance', 'CleanTest', true)

And This Wrapper does :

1.Detects if running on MATLAB Online
2.Checks if pip is available
3.Auto-bootstraps pip if missing
4.Calls the original setupPythonEnv
5.Fixes sys.path so MATLAB can find installed packages
Lastly, Optionally cleans pip and packages (CleanTest mode) , To Try to install and configure it again but here you need to reset matlab since it's in a saved sessions, otherwise, will not showing the error until you reopen again.

It was working very well with me !! but now it dose not work now I am not quit sure why !!

After that I tried the to do my first Pull request with you so I tried to edit setupPythonEnv function to let it support ONLINE MATLAB.

1- I modified run_system_checks and added lunix check
2- move Code from setupPythonEnvSafe to orginal function setupPythonEnv

But unfortunately, I still have lack of knowledge to dig deep in MATLAB but I hope this code that I will attach will inspire you a little bit.

Again this code just for inspiring you a little bit.

---

Lastly, I could not make it this time but for sure I will do it next time ! Full Code below :

function setupPythonEnvSafe(varargin)
% setupPythonEnvSafe - Smart wrapper around setupPythonEnv
% Automatically bootstraps pip if missing (e.g. MATLAB Online)
%
% Usage:
% setupPythonEnvSafe('PipCommand', 'install yfinance')
% setupPythonEnvSafe('PipCommand', 'install yfinance', 'CleanTest', true)
%
% Optional Parameters:
% 'CleanTest' (true/false) - Removes pip and all installed packages
% before running, for a clean test.
%
% This wrapper:
% 1. Optionally cleans pip and packages (CleanTest mode)
% 2. Detects if running on MATLAB Online
% 3. Checks if pip is available
% 4. Auto-bootstraps pip if missing
% 5. Calls the original setupPythonEnv
% 6. Fixes sys.path so MATLAB can find installed packages

% ---------------------------------------------------------------
% STEP 0: Parse CleanTest option out of varargin
% ---------------------------------------------------------------
cleanTest = false;
cleanIdx  = [];

for i = 1:length(varargin)
    if ischar(varargin{i}) && strcmpi(varargin{i}, 'CleanTest')
        cleanTest = varargin{i+1};
        cleanIdx  = [i, i+1];
    end
end

% Remove CleanTest pair from varargin before passing to setupPythonEnv
varargin(cleanIdx) = [];

% ---------------------------------------------------------------
% STEP 1: Clean test — remove pip and packages if requested
% ---------------------------------------------------------------
if cleanTest
    fprintf('==> CleanTest mode enabled. Removing pip and packages...\n');
    cleanPythonEnv();
end

% ---------------------------------------------------------------
% STEP 2: Detect MATLAB Online
% ---------------------------------------------------------------
fprintf('==> Checking environment...\n');
if isMATLABOnline()
    fprintf('==> MATLAB Online detected.\n');
else
    fprintf('==> Running on local MATLAB.\n');
end

% ---------------------------------------------------------------
% STEP 3: Check if pip is available
% ---------------------------------------------------------------
[pipStatus, ~] = system('python3 -m pip --version');
pipMissing = (pipStatus ~= 0);

% ---------------------------------------------------------------
% STEP 4: Bootstrap pip if missing
% ---------------------------------------------------------------
if pipMissing
    fprintf('==> pip not found. Attempting to bootstrap pip...\n');

    [s, r] = system('curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o /tmp/get-pip.py');
    if s ~= 0
        fprintf('==> curl failed, trying wget...\n');
        [s, r] = system('wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -O /tmp/get-pip.py');
        if s ~= 0
            error('setupPythonEnvSafe:pipBootstrapFailed', ...
                  'Could not download get-pip.py.\nError: %s', r);
        end
    end

    [s, r] = system('python3 /tmp/get-pip.py --user');
    if s ~= 0
        error('setupPythonEnvSafe:pipInstallFailed', ...
              'Failed to install pip.\nError: %s', r);
    end

    fprintf('==> pip bootstrapped successfully!\n');
else
    fprintf('==> pip is already available.\n');
end

% ---------------------------------------------------------------
% STEP 5: Call the original setupPythonEnv with all arguments
% ---------------------------------------------------------------
fprintf('==> Running setupPythonEnv...\n');
setupPythonEnv(varargin{:});

% ---------------------------------------------------------------
% STEP 6: Fix sys.path so MATLAB can find user-installed packages
% ---------------------------------------------------------------
[~, userSite] = system('python3 -c "import site; print(site.getusersitepackages())"');
userSite = strtrim(userSite);

if ~isempty(userSite)
    pyrun("import sys; sys.path.insert(0, '" + userSite + "') " + ...
          "if '" + userSite + "' not in sys.path else None");
    fprintf('==> sys.path updated: %s\n', userSite);
end

fprintf('==> Done! Environment is ready.\n');

end

% ---------------------------------------------------------------
% Helper: Clean pip and all user-installed packages
% ---------------------------------------------------------------
function cleanPythonEnv()
fprintf('-------------------------------------------\n');
fprintf(' CLEAN TEST: Removing pip and packages\n');
fprintf('-------------------------------------------\n');

% Get user site-packages path
[~, userSite] = system('python3 -c "import site; print(site.getusersitepackages())"');
userSite = strtrim(userSite);

% Remove all user site-packages
if ~isempty(userSite)
    [~, r] = system(['rm -rf ' userSite '/*']);
    fprintf('==> Cleared: %s\n', userSite);
end

% Remove pip specifically
[~, r] = system('python3 -m pip uninstall pip -y 2>&1');
fprintf('==> pip uninstall: %s\n', r);

% Verify
[s, ~] = system('python3 -m pip --version');
if s ~= 0
    fprintf('==> Confirmed: pip is gone.\n');
else
    fprintf('==> Warning: pip may still be present.\n');
end

fprintf('==> Clean complete. Please RESTART MATLAB Online now.\n');
fprintf('==> Then re-run setupPythonEnvSafe without CleanTest.\n');
fprintf('-------------------------------------------\n');

% Remind user to restart
error('setupPythonEnvSafe:restartRequired', ...
      'MATLAB Online must be restarted after CleanTest to reset the Python session. Please close and reopen MATLAB Online, then run setupPythonEnvSafe normally.');

end

% ---------------------------------------------------------------
% Helper: Detect MATLAB Online
% ---------------------------------------------------------------
function result = isMATLABOnline()
result = ~isempty(getenv('MLM_WEB_SESSION')) || ...
~isempty(getenv('MATLAB_ONLINE'));
if ~result
result = exist('/usr/local/matlab', 'dir') == 7;
end
end

[matteozanettii]

Hi @slemankfa , great effort!

As a fellow student working on FSDA, I really appreciate your 'safe wrapper' approach. Dealing with the Linux-based environment of MATLAB Online is a known pain point, and your pip bootstrapping logic is a very clever workaround.

A few thoughts to help you move from a 'wrapper' to a full integration in the main setupPythonEnv:

Path Persistence: The reason it 'stops working' after a while is likely due to how MATLAB Online handles persistent sessions. Your sys.path fix is correct, but we should ensure it runs every time the environment is initialized.

Integration: Instead of a separate function, we could merge your isMATLABOnline() check directly into the core run_system_checks of the FSDA function.

The Restart Issue: As you noted, Python often locks the session. Maybe we can add a specific message that detects if a library was installed but is not yet 'importable', suggesting the restart automatically.

Don't say you 'could not make it'—this is exactly the kind of 'inspiration' the project needs! Keep it up!