From: ChrisH <chris.hulan@...>
Date: 2006-07-27T01:45:06+09:00
Subject: Re: open - uri question


akanksha wrote:
> I am using open-uri for the first time. I need to visit a bunch of urls
> and gather some data. Here is a samll code snippet
>
> require 'open-uri' # allows the use of a file like API for URLs
> open( "http://no-way-outspaik375.spaces.msn.com/") { |file|
>   lines = file.read
>   puts lines
>
> }
>
> and here is the error I get
>  ruby test.rb
> /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:290:in `open_http': 500 Internal
> Server Error (OpenURI::HTTPError)
...

You can see some info on HTTP 500 errors here:
http://www.checkupdown.com/status/E500.html

Maybe the service was down?
Or they may have it restricted to prevent scraping?
You may need to provide some info to fool the site into
thinking your a regular browser...

Cheers