Creating XML outputs with MATLAB

If you want to format your data output as an XML file, here's how to do it without doing any complicated string handling. MATLAB can use the XML handling capabilities of Java very easily. Here's how:

Assume that your data is available in arrays arrData1 and arrData2. Create an XML document node, say Node1 as follows:

docNode = com.mathworks.xml.XMLUtils.createDocument('Node1');
docRootNode = docNode.getDocumentElement;

Now put the data in the data nodes..

for i=1:length(arrData1),
% create nodes..
    elPar = docNode.createElement('DataParent');
    elData1 = docNode.createElement('Data1');
    elData2 = docNode.createElement('Data2');

% put data in nodes..
    elData1.appendChild(...
docNode.createTextNode(sprintf('%f', arrData1(i))));
    elData2.appendChild(...
docNode.createTextNode(sprintf('%f', arrData2(i))));

% put nodes in the correct positions..
    elParent.appendChild(elData1);
    elParent.appendChild(elData2);
    docRootNode.appendChild(elParent);
end

Now save the XML document. You can save it directly, or use uiputfile to get the standard save dialog of the OS.

[filename, pathname] = uiputfile(...
sprintf('%s.xml', datFile), 'Save XML file as');

% Save the XML document.
% xmlFileName = [dataOutFile,'.xml'];
    xmlFileName = fullfile(pathname, filename);
    xmlwrite(xmlFileName,docNode);
% open xml file to see your output
    edit(xmlFileName);

To see more ways of using XML with MATLAB, refer to Java's documentation and play around to see what works.

The MATLAB blog

Over the course of my research and work I have accumulated a fair share of MATLAB hacks where I have used MATLAB to accomplish tasks that go beyond the usual equation-solving and numerical-simulations routines. Mostly I have been motivated by my own laziness and reluctance to code everything in C, or to use a combination of tools, but as I have discovered along the way, MATLAB is truly a very powerful tool and allows you to accomplish complicated stuff using very simple commands. If you have any interesting ways of using MATLAB, feel free to send them in and I will duly acknowledge your contribution. Enjoy!