From: Richard Hill <ric_j_hill@...>
Date: 2009-07-10T15:04:08+09:00
Subject: Question about ruby syntax

Hi

I've been reading about ruby and started to learn it to replace the work
I was doing with perl. I have a question about the code from this link.


http://www.adaruby.com/2008/01/11/scraping-gmail-with-mechanize-and-hpricot/

I don't understand this code. I can see that it is a block  that returns
array of entries containing  the html for every tr with a white
background

 #################################

page.search("//tr[@bgcolor='#ffffff']")  do |row|

from, subject = *row.search("//b/text()")
url = page.uri.to_s.sub(/ui.*$/,
row.search("//a").first.attributes["href"])
puts "From: #{from}\nSubject: #{subject}\nLink: #{url}\n\n"

email = agent.get url


##################################


But what does the   from, subject = *row.search("//b/text()")  do?

How is the *row different than  row?


Finally what does this do? I can see a regex but don't understand the
line.

url = page.uri.to_s.sub(/ui.*$/,
row.search("//a").first.attributes["href"])

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards Richard

















#################################### FULL CODE
#############################

require 'rubygems'
require 'mechanize'

agent = WWW::Mechanize.new

page = agent.get 'http://www.gmail.com'
form = page.forms.first
form.Email = '***your gmail account***'
form.Passwd = '***your password***'
page = agent.submit form

page = agent.get
page.search("//meta").first.attributes['href'].gsub(/'/,'')
page = agent.get page.uri.to_s.sub(/\?.*$/, "?ui=html&zy=n")
page.search("//tr[@bgcolor='#ffffff']")  do |row|
from, subject = *row.search("//b/text()")
url = page.uri.to_s.sub(/ui.*$/,
row.search("//a").first.attributes["href"])
puts "From: #{from}\nSubject: #{subject}\nLink: #{url}\n\n"

email = agent.get url
# ..
end
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