How can I make urlread faster / problem using urlread2?

Hello,

I am using old Matlab 7 and been struggling with urlread-function. It is painfully slow.

A=urlread('http://www.mathworks.com') takes about 700ms and it is just 35000 characters long. Basically smaller or larger webpages take between 700 and 900ms to read, so this is not about the speed of the internet connection.

I also read about the improved urlread2-function, but could not get it working. I downloaded this

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/35693-urlread2

and copied all files to a folder. When running

A=urlread2('http://www.mathworks.com')

It gave this error

Error in ==> urlread2 at 144 assert(usejava('jvm'),'Function requires Java')

OK, I found the assert.m function online and copied it to the folder too. Now this error appeared:

??? Undefined variable "com" or class "com.mathworks.net.transport.MWTransportClientPropertiesFactory.create".

Error in ==> urlread2>getURLConnection at 360 mwtcp = com.mathworks.net.transport.MWTransportClientPropertiesFactory.create();

Error in ==> urlread2 at 151 urlConnection = getURLConnection(urlChar);

Any idea how I could get urlread2 working or make urlread faster? Any help in this problem is greatly appreciated. Thank you so much in advance.

[Geoff Hayes]

If you run the following in the Command Window

 usejava('jvm')

what is the result? (I'm guessing that it is zero.) Also, what does

 version -java

return? (This returns the version of the Oracle® JVM™ software that MATLAB is using.)

[Joel]

usejava('jvm') returns 1 and the java version is:

Java 1.4.2 with Sun Microsystems Inc. Java HotSpot™ Client VM (mixed mode)

Answer 1

[per isakson]

With R2013a,64bit,Win7 and a "fast" Internet connection.

>> tic, A=urlread('http://www.mathworks.com'); toc
Elapsed time is 0.763045 seconds.
>> tic, A=urlread('http://www.mathworks.com'); toc
Elapsed time is 0.769103 seconds.
>> 

>> usejava jvm
ans =
     1
>> version -java
ans =
Java 1.6.0_17-b04 with Sun Microsystems Inc. Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM mixed mode

http://www.speedtest.net/ says my download speed is 720Mbps

[Joel]

So this basically confirms what I suspected: urlread is generally slow regardless of the computer/matlab setup you are using. You can find people complaning about that online.

The next questions are then:

1) are there ways to speed-up urlread? 2) is urlread2 faster? 3) if yes, why doesnt urlread2 work in my first post here?

[per isakson]

1. ask at Expanding urlread capabilities
2. I cannot find any claims that urlread2 should be faster.

[Yingyun Ai]

hi, can I ask if you have solve the problem, does it read faster than urlread?