From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2003-10-01T15:02:48+09:00
Subject: Re: HTML-Parser / SGML-Parser

Zach Dennis wrote:
> Ok, silly question.
> 
> I am writing a script to determine my router's WAN ip address and then to
> email me once an hour in case it changes. Currently I am running a web
> server at work that returns a page with the client's ip address. I need to
> parse out the info on the page so I can extract the ip address of my router
> when my script/program connects.
> 
> I am using the html-parser, sgml-parser and formatter ruby libraries
> provided from raa and I have made the changes to the regexp regarding image
> width and height. So I'm good there.
> 
> In my test.rb file I say:
> ------------------------------------------------
> h = Net::HTTP.new('www.zachstestip.com' , 80 )
> resp,data = h.get('/index.php' , nil )
> 
> w = DumbWriter.new
> f = AbstractFormatter.new(w)
> p = HTMLParser.new(f)
> p.feed(data)
> p.close
> ------------------------------------------------
> 
> Here comes the silly part. The function "feed" is inherited by sgml-parser
> to html-parser. It passes "data" along to the sgml-parser function
> "goahead". It prints everything to stdout or stderr( i dont know, but it
> makes it to my screen =), but there is no print, put, etc... etc... call to
> send it there!!! I cant for the life of me determine where in the feed or
> goahead functions are outputting my parsed results from data! This is damn
> silly of me to ask I know, but how is it getting to my CLI?
> 
> In the "goahead" function there is a giant while loop. If i place a print or
> puts statement at the right before the loop and right after the loop, then
> nothing is outputted( except for my explicit print/puts statements).
> 
> Am I losing it?

Why not just qualify your IP address with something like >>>>IP<<<< and 
then you can regex for it like this:

     match = />>>>(.+)<<<</.match(HTML)

     match[1] => your IP address

	Sean O'Dell