Enhancing the "getpubmed" function

Good evening, everyone!

The information posted here:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/bioinfo/ug/creating-get-functions.html

enables one to assemble a "getpubmed" function that gathers together search information from searches submitted to PubMed. This is an excellent utility that works as advertised when the individual code components are assembled. I'm interested in extending it, but am not sure how to do it. I have two preliminary questions:

1. The number of hits harvested from PubMed is limited to 200 since that is the maximum number of hits that can be returned on the first page of results. so the function is limited to returning only 200 hits, although the PubMed search might return many more hits than that (thousands, for example). How can the function be modified so that it collects more than just the first 200 hits; and

2. Where can one usually find the base syntax for a site's search URL and the optional parameters that can be concatenated onto that search URL? This syntax is the key to extending the function's applicability to other websites (other online journals, for example), but I'm not sure how to find the base syntax for another site's search URL and optional parameters, so that I can rewrite the function appropriately.

Any help/pointers/guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Joe

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

2. The base search URL and the optional parameters are often undocumented and subject to change. People usually derive them through trial-and-error.