How to decode xml content using webread ?

Hello,

I am doing a webread that gives an xml document :

url='***'; % not displayed
data = webread(url)

My issue is that I am getting characters like :

"<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt"

It is clear that the xml data is not decoded correctly. I have tried to use weboptions by specifying 'MediaType' and 'ContentType' but it did not help at all :

options                 = weboptions(...
    'MediaType','text/xml');

The above changed nothing.

options                 = weboptions(...
    'ContentType', 'xmldom')

The above retreived no data at all.

The xml document is embedded into an soap Envelope liek this :

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">

<soap:Body>

<ns2:***>

<TheXMLIwant>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<blabla>123456</blabla>

</TheXMLIwant>

</ns2:***>

</soap:Body>

</soap:Envelope>

I found a function from MATLAB doing what I need but you have to have a Text Analytics toolbox which I guess is completely overshoot fo what is required here:

decodeHTMLEntities

Should be a way to do this with the webread.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

[Andrew Black]

I encountered this same problem, and there's a bit of a workaround described here:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/101632-how-can-i-use-a-function-such-as-xmlread-to-parse-xml-data-from-a-string-instead-of-from-a-file-i

and the xmldom structure described nicely here:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/260969-why-do-i-receive-an-empty-document-document-null-when-i-read-a-xml-file-with-xmlread

Once you have xmlreadstring.m from the first link in your path:

wr = webread(url);
dom = xmlreadstring(wr);

and your XML data, from your url is now in dom.

I am not sure how the soap envelope will effect this, but if you strip the envelope from your xml string, it should work.