MATLAB Programming

Exchanging Files over the Internet
Example — Using the urlread Function
The following procedure demonstrates how to retrieve the contents of the Web
page containing the Recent File list at the MATLAB Central File Exchange,
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/index.jsp. It
assigns the results to a string variable, recentFile, and it uses the strfind
function to search the retrieved content for a specific word:
1 Retrieve the Web page content with the urlread function:
recentFile =
urlread('http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/
loadFileList.do?objectType=fileexchange&orderBy=date&srt3=0');
2 After retrieving the content, run the strfind function on the recentFile
variable:
hits = strfind(recentFile,'Simulink');
IfthefilecontainsthewordSimulink, MATLAB will store the matches
in the hits variable.
While you can manually pass arguments using the URL, the urlread
function also lets you pass parameters to a Web page using standard HTTP
methods, including post and form. Using the HTTP get method, which
passes parameters in the URL, the following code queries Google for the
word Simulink:
s =
urlread('http://www.google.com/search','get',{'q','Simulink'})
For more information, see the urlread reference page.
Example — Using the urlwrite Function
The following example builds on the procedure in the previous section. This
example still uses urlread and checks for a specific word, but it also uses
urlwrite to save the file if it contains any matches:
% The urlread function loads the contents of the Web page into
the % MATLAB workspace.
recentFile =
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