From: James Britt <james.britt@...>
Date: 2006-12-22T13:41:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Just starting out, where do I go from here?

Peter Szinek wrote:

> I have found "Ruby for Rails" the best fit for this situation (I also
> felt that the pickaxe is about a level or two higher what I needed in
> the beginning). 


I second the suggestion of getting Ruby for Rails, regardless of any 
plans to use Rails.


For screen-scraping, I wrote up my experience with Mechanize in creating 
rubystuff.com by extracting data from CafePress sites.

http://www.neurogami.com/cafe-fetcher/

It may be a bit dated; Mechanize has changed some.

I would also suggest looking into Hpricot; my recent site snarfing 
forays have been fairly pain-free thanks to this library.


-- 
James Britt

http://www.ruby-doc.org    - Ruby Help & Documentation
http://beginningruby.com   - Beginning Ruby: The Online Book
http://www.rubystuff.com   - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://www.jamesbritt.com  - Playing with Better Toys