Ruby: How do I parse links with Nokogiri with content/text all the same? - ruby

Question

What I am trying to do: Parse links from website (http://nytm.org/made-in-nyc) that all have the exact same content. "(hiring)" Then I will write to a file 'jobs.html' a list of links. (If it is a violation to publish these websites I will quickly take down the direct URL. I thought it might be useful as a reference to what I am trying to do. First time posting on stack)
DOM Structure:
<article>
<ol>
<li>#waywire</li>
<li><a href="http://1800Postcards.com" target="_self" class="vt-p">1800Postcards.com</a</li>
<li>Adafruit Industries</li>
<li><a href="http://www.adafruit.com/jobs/" target="_self" class="vt-p">(hiring)</a</li>
etc...
What I have tried:
require 'nokogiri'
require 'open-uri'
def find_jobs
doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open('http://nytm.org/made-in-nyc'))
hire_links = doc.css("a").select{|link| link.text == "(hiring)"}
results = hire_links.each{|link| puts link['href']}
begin
file = File.open("./jobs.html", "w")
file.write("#{results}")
rescue IOError => e
ensure
file.close unless file == nil
end
puts hire_links
end
find_jobs
Here is a Gist
Example Result:
[344] #<Nokogiri::XML::Element:0x3fcfa2e2276c name="a" attributes=[#<Nokogiri::XML::Attr:0x3fcfa2e226e0 name="href" value="http://www.zocdoc.com/careers">, #<Nokogiri::XML::Attr:0x3fcfa2e2267c name="target" value="_blank">] children=[#<Nokogiri::XML::Text:0x3fcfa2e1ff1c "(hiring)">]>
So it successfully writes these entries into the jobs.html file but it is in XML format? Not sure how to target just the value and create a link from that. Not sure where to go from here. Thanks!

Answer 1

The problem is with how results is defined. results is an array of Nokogiri::XML::Element:
results = hire_links.each{|link| puts link['href']}
p results.class
#=> Array
p results.first.class
#=> Nokogiri::XML::Element
When you go to write the Nokogiri::XML::Element to the file, you get the results of inspecting it:
puts results.first.inspect
#=> "#<Nokogiri::XML::Element:0x15b9694 name="a" attributes=...."
Given that you want the href attribute of each link, you should collect that in the results instead:
results = hire_links.map{ |link| link['href'] }
Assuming you want each href/link displayed as a line in the file, you can join the array:
File.write('./jobs.html', results.join("\n"))
The modified script:
require 'nokogiri'
require 'open-uri'
def find_jobs
doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open('http://nytm.org/made-in-nyc'))
hire_links = doc.css("a").select { |link| link.text == "(hiring)"}
results = hire_links.map { |link| link['href'] }
File.write('./jobs.html', results.join("\n"))
end
find_jobs
#=> produces a jobs.html with:
#=> http://www.20x200.com/jobs/
#=> http://www.8coupons.com/home/jobs
#=> http://jobs.about.com/index.html
#=> ...

Answer 2

Try using Mechanize. It leverages Nokogiri, and you can do something like
require 'mechanize'
browser = Mechanize.new
page = browser.get('http://nytm.org/made-in-nyc')
links = page.links_with(text: /(hiring)/)
Then you will have an array of link objects that you can get whatever info you want. You can also use the link.click method that Mechanize provides.