How to convert a matlab structure to xml file

Once a time I wanted to convert a matlab structure into an xml file. I know there are many ready solutions but I wanted one which fit exactly my needs. Let's say that we have a structure Student like this:

Student.Firstname = 'George';

Student.Surname = 'Hames';

Student.Age = 19;

Student.Semester = 'C';

Student.Course1.Grade = 8;

Student.Course2.Grade = 7;

Student.Course3.Grade = 9;

Student.Course4.Grade = 5;

and we want to convert it into this xml file:

<Student>

   <Firstname>George</Firstname>

   <Surname>Hames</Surname>

   <Age>19</Age>

   <Semester>C</Semester>

   <Course1>

      <Grade>8</Grade>

   </Course1>

   <Course2>

      <Grade>7</Grade>

   </Course2>

   <Course3>

      <Grade>9</Grade>

   </Course3>

   <Course4>

      <Grade>5</Grade>

   </Course4>

</Student>

My draft solution is this:

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function xml = struct2xml( s ) sfields = fieldnames(s); xml = ''; for i=1:length(sfields) if isstruct(s.(sfields{i})) xml = [xml, strtrim(strcat('<', sfields{i}, '>')), char(10), strtrim([struct2xml(s.(sfields{i})), strcat('</', sfields{i}, '>')]), char(10)]; else fieldValue = s.(sfields{i}); if (iscell(fieldValue)) if (size(fieldValue,1)>1), fieldValue = fieldValue'; end; fieldValue = strjoin(fieldValue, '#'); end if (isnumeric(fieldValue) && length(fieldValue)>1) fieldValueStr = ''; for j=1:length(fieldValue) fieldValueStr = strcat(fieldValueStr, num2str(fieldValue(j)), '#'); end fieldValue = fieldValueStr(1:length(fieldValueStr)-1); end if (isnumeric(fieldValue) && length(fieldValue)==1) fieldValue = num2str(fieldValue); end xml = [xml, strcat('<', sfields{i}, '>', char(fieldValue), '</', sfields{i}, '>'), char(10)]; end end end

First of all I have to say that it is not the optimum solution but it works for me. If a field takes multiple values, I use a delimiter (#) to represent them as a string. For example if struct1.field1 = [1 3 40 2] then in the xml we have <struct1><field1>1#3#40#2</field1></struct1>. In order to write the xml string to a file I use the following script:

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function [] = struct2xmlfile( s, filename ) xmlStr = struct2xml(s); xmlStr = strrep(xmlStr, '%', '%%'); fid = fopen(filename, 'wt'); fprintf(fid, xmlStr); fclose(fid); end