MATLAB Programming

6 Data Import and Export
Exchanging Files over the Internet
MATLAB provides functions for exchanging files over the Internet. You can
exchange files using common protocols, such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP),
Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP), and HyperText Transfer Protocol
(HTTP). In addition, you can create zip archives to minimize the transmitted
file size, and you can save and work with Web pages.
For more information, see the following sections:
• “Downloading Web Content and Files” on page 6-116
• “Creating and Decompressing Zip Archives” on page 6-118
• “Sending E-Mail” on page 6-119
• “Performing FTP File Operations” on page 6-121
Downloading Web Content and Files
MATLAB provides two functions for downloading Web pages and files using
HTTP: urlread and urlwrite. Withthe urlread function, you can read
and save the contents of a Web page to a string variable in the MATLAB
workspace. With the urlwrite function, you can save a Web page’s content
to a file.
Because it creates a string variable in the workspace, the urlread function is
useful for working with the contents of Web pages in MATLAB. The urlwrite
function is useful for saving Web pages to a local directory.
Note When using urlread, remember that only the HTML in that specific
Web page is retrieved. The hyperlink targets, images, and so on will not be
retrieved.
If you need to pass parameters to a Web page, the urlread and urlwrite
functions let you use HTTP post and get methods. For more information, see
the urlread and urlwrite reference pages.
6-116