MATLAB: Is there an example of how to call Microsoft Internet Explorer as an automation server

MATLAB

I would like an example of how to use MATLAB and ActiveX to call Internet Explorer as an automation server.

Best Answer

The following example uses the ACTXCONTROL command to call Internet Explorer. Note: This may not work on newer versions of MATLAB as the COM interface for Internet Explorer may have changed.

This function takes in a URL as a string, loads the URL in Internet Explorer, copies the text from the URL, and returns the copied text as a string for use inside of MATLAB.

function str=CopyPasteIE(url);
ha = actxserver('internetexplorer.application');
ha.Visible = 1;
Navigate(ha, url);
pause(3); % Pause to let the page load
ha.document.execCommand('selectall','','');
ha.document.execCommand('copy','','');
str=clipboard('paste');

Note: The code provided in this example is for demonstration purposes and has not been thoroughly tested.

Related Solutions

MATLAB: How to preemptively include a Basic Authentication header when working with “webread”/”webwrite”/”websave” in MATLAB R2019b

In MATLAB releases prior to MATLAB R2019b, when you specified a 'Username' and 'Password' MATLAB would preemptively pass along these in a Basic Authentication header in the first request which "webread" makes. In MATLAB R2019b this changed, MATLAB now follows the challenge and response workflows from RFC-7235 more closely; which basically means it first makes a request without credentials expecting the server to return an "401 - Unauthorized" response in combination with a 'WWW-Authenticate' header specifying which authentication methods it supports. MATLAB then makes a second request with that particular authentication method. This is a more secure approach but this breaks workflows working with servers like the one described above.

If you still want "webread"/"webwrite"/"websave" to preemptive include a Basic Authentication header in the first request, do not specify 'Username' and 'Password' property/value pairs in "weboptions", instead use 'HeaderFields' to specify your own Authentication header. A Basic Authentication header is very simple to form: it is simply the text 'Basic ', followed by [username] colon [password] in base64 encoded format. So in MATLAB you could for example write:

% Example username and password
username = 'myUser';
password = 'myPassword';
% Manually set Authorization header field in weboptions
options = weboptions('HeaderFields',{'Authorization',...
    ['Basic ' matlab.net.base64encode([username ':' password])]});
% Make a request using these options
webread('https://httpbin.org/hidden-basic-auth/myUser/myPassword', options)

Note httpbin.org is a service for testing HTTP requests, the 'hidden-basic-auth' endpoint behaves in a way similar to described above (the request succeeds if you preemptively include a Basic Authorization header but immediately returns "404 - Not Found" if no (valid) authentication header was present). The myUser and myPassword specified in the request URL here is part of this particular testing endpoint, when calling your actual server you would normally not include your username and password in the request URL in this way, also do not call httpbin.org with you real username and password.

This approach also works correctly in MATLAB releases prior to R2019b.

Further note that the workflow for the HTTP interface has not changed. In this interface, if you explicitly specify 'Username', 'Password' and exactly one authentication method using a Credentials object, the Authorization header was always- and still is- preemptively included in the first request. So you can still write:

import matlab.net.http.*
% Create a credentials object. If you specify exactly one Scheme, we
% immediately automatically add the Authorization header for this Scheme,
% if you do not specify a Scheme we first make a request without any
% Authorization header expecting a server challenge.
creds = Credentials('Username','myUser','Password','myPassword',...
    'Scheme', AuthenticationScheme.Basic);
% Add these credentials to the options
options = HTTPOptions('Credentials', creds);
% Create a request
req = RequestMessage('GET');
% Execute this request on some URL with these options
response = req.send('https://httpbin.org/hidden-basic-auth/myUser/myPassword',options);

MATLAB: How to read an HTML file into MATLAB and discard the HTML tags

There is no function available in MATLAB that will read HTML files and remove the HTML tags. However, this can easily be accomplished by using Regular Expressions:

str = '<HTML>My flowers <b>may</b> <A HREF=''<http://www.a.com'' http://www.a.com''>>bloom in</A> May</HTML>';
pat = '<[^>]*>';
regexprep(str, pat, '')

An alternative method without the use of Regular Expressions involves scanning the HTML file, replacing *"*BR" tags with newline characters, as well as removing other tags. The attached example, fread_html.m, demonstrates one possible solution that handles a subset of HTML tags.

An alternative method of saving an html file without HTML formatting tags is accomplished through the use of ActiveX. The following code calls Microsoft Internet Explorer as an ActiveX automation server, copies the text of the supplied URL and stores the text into a MATLAB variable.

function str=CopyPasteIE(url);
ha = actxserver('internetexplorer.application');
Navigate(ha, url);
pause(3); % Pause to let the page load
ha.document.execCommand('selectall','','');
ha.document.execCommand('copy','','');
str=clipboard('paste');

Example usage: mystr=CopyPasteIE('http://www.google.com');

Note: The code provided in this example is for demonstration purposes and has not been throughly tested.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: How to preemptively include a Basic Authentication header when working with “webread”/​”webwrite”​/”websave” in MATLAB R2019b

MATLAB: How to read an HTML file into MATLAB and discard the HTML tags

Related Question

MATLAB: How to preemptively include a Basic Authentication header when working with “webread”/”webwrite”/”websave” in MATLAB R2019b