why do I receive an empty document [#document: null] when I read a xml file with xmlread?

I tried to read a simple xml file {<rows> <row id='0'> <cell>65</cell> </row> <row id='1'> <cell>565</cell> </row> <row id='2'> <cell>6565</cell> </row></rows>} and received [#document: null].

Answer 1

[Robert Snoeberger]

I'm not sure why you think that you received an empty document.

The display that you are seeing, [#document: null], consists of two parts. The first part is #document, which is the node name. When you parse XML with xmlread, you always receive a #document node as the top-level node.

>> dom = xmlread('example.xml')

dom =

[#document: null]

>> getNodeName(dom)

ans =

#document

>>

The second part is null, which is the value of the node. null is used to indicate that the node doesn't have a value.

>> getNodeValue(dom)

ans =

       []

>>

A #text node usually has a value. In your example, the text node under the first cell element has a value of '65'.

>> cells = dom.getElementsByTagName('cell');
>> cell  = cells.item(0)

cell =

[cell: null]

>> text = cell.item(0)

text =

[#text: 65]

>> getNodeValue(text)

ans =

65

>>

[Siahlo Ivan]

Thank you for the answer. The question was stupid. I had to read more help. I know a little about DOM and found later the answer. However, your answer is useful for me. Now I understand better the logic of Matlab. I'm new in Matlab and document:null disturbed me. I saw that the file was read and I could not understand why document was null.

[SimonD]

Me too - this was useful - thank you!

[YUNA PARK]

Thanks! This was really helpful to me!

[Runzhi Jiao]

Very good answer! a lot help for me! thanks a lot!