Check if Internet Connection Exists with Ruby?

Question

Just asked how to check if an internet connection exists using javascript and got some great answers. What's the easiest way to do this in Ruby? In trying to make generated html markup code as clean as possible, I'd like to conditionally render the script tag for javascript files depending on whether or not an internet condition. Something like (this is HAML):

- if internet_connection?
    %script{:src => "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js", :type => "text/javascript"}
- else
    %script{:src => "/shared/javascripts/jquery/jquery.js", :type => "text/javascript"}

Answer 1

require 'open-uri'

def internet_connection?
  begin
    true if open("http://www.google.com/")
  rescue
    false
  end
end

This is closer to what the OP is looking for. It works in Ruby 1.8 and 1.9. It's a bit cleaner too.