Development Environment

Exchanging Files with the Internet

MATLAB provides a set of functions for exchanging files with the Internet. These include

• Downloading URL Content
• ZIP Functions
• Sending E-Mail

Downloading URL Content

From within MATLAB, you can read and save the content of a URL. The urlread function reads the content to a string variable in the MATLAB workspace. The urlwrite function saves the content to a file.

Example--Retrieving Content from a URL

This example downloads the contents of the Top Authors list at MATLAB Central File Exchange, assigning the results to the string s in the MATLAB workspace.

1. Retrieve the URL content.

• s = 
  urlread('http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/
  TopFiles.jsp?type=category&id=&value=TopAuthors');
  

2. After retrieving the content, perform MATLAB functions on the variable s, such as

• findstr(s,'My_name')
  

The next example downloads the files submitted for Signal Processing, Communications, and DSP from MATLAB Central File Exchange, saving the results to samples.html in the MATLAB current directory.

• urlwrite('http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange
  /Category.jsp?type=category&id=1','samples.html');
  

After downloading, you can view the file in your Web browser.

Closing a File

ZIP Functions