I wouldn't recommend internal Matlab functions such as urlread() and urlwrite(). Instead, take a look at cURL:You can use the function system() to control cURL in Matlab. If you don't have experience with the cURL syntax, you can use the Firefox plugin firebug to generate cURL commands.
Here's a rough example of how you would do it:
- Download cURL from here (You will either need a Win32 version or a Win64 version, depending on your operating system's architecture).
- Extract the command line tool and put it in Matlab's current directory.
- Install Firebug for Firefox
- In Firefox, navigate to the website you would like to automate the commands for.
- You need to activate Firebug with the plugin button on the toolbar. A window will pop up below.
- Fill out the form/s and hit send or search or whatever to send off the form.
- In Firebug, under "console", look for POST requests. Right click on them and "copy as cURL".
- Past the command into a text editor (I recommend Notepad++) that has a "find and replace" feature. The Matlab editor is sufficient for this task, too.
- Replace all ' in the command with " (the Linux version of cURL uses ' while the Windows version uses " in it's syntax)
- This is where it gets tricky: You need to analyze the cURL code. In Matlab, copy and paste the cURL commands variables in Matlab. Use the concatenation function to make the text more readable.
cmd = ['-curl "https://www.example.com', ...
/more_text_here', ...
/even_more_text_here']
Search the command for the text you put into the forms (WARNING: Be careful not to accidentally reveal any login information or other sensitive information!)
You can use concatenation to turn those strings into variables. For example, I would like to send a request repeatedly for data of various dates.
cmd1 = ['-curl "https://example.com/more_curl_command/',...];
cmd2 = datestr(timestamp(i), 'dd.mm.yyyy'); % replace part of command containing the input with a variable
cmd3 = ['+-hstart+0+-hstop+24+-hinc+0.25', rest_of_command];
[status, cmdout] = system([cmd1, cmd2, cmd3]);
If you find something like a sessionID in the first command output "cmdout", you may need to extract that and replace all sessionIDs in any further commands with the one returned in cmdout.
That's pretty much it. I would suggest you give it a try. It will take some time to figure out, but once you do, it works quite reliably. With a little practice, you can automate almost everything you can do using a browser.
