Getting webpage content with Ruby -- I'm having troubles

Question

I want to get the content off this* page. Everything I've looked up gives the solution of parsing CSS elements; but, that page has none.

Here's the only code that I found that looked like it should work:

file = File.open('http://hiscore.runescape.com/index_lite.ws?player=zezima', "r")
contents = file.read
puts contents

Error:

tracker.rb:1:in 'initialize': Invalid argument - http://hiscore.runescape.com/index_lite.ws?player=zezima (Errno::EINVAL)
  from tracker.rb:1:in 'open'
  from tracker.rb:1

*http://hiscore.runescape.com/index_lite.ws?player=zezima

If you try to format this as a link in the post it doesn't recognize the underscore (_) in the URL for some reason.

Answer 1

You really want to use open() provided by the Kernel class which can read from URIs you just need to require the OpenURI library first:

require 'open-uri'

Used like so:

require 'open-uri'
file = open('http://hiscore.runescape.com/index_lite.ws?player=zezima')
contents = file.read
puts contents

This related SO thread covers the same question:

Open an IO stream from a local file or url

Answer 2

The appropriate way to fetch the content of a website is through the NET::HTTP module in Ruby:

require 'uri'
require 'net/http'
url = "http://hiscore.runescape.com/index_lite.ws?player=zezima"
r = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(url).host, URI.parse(url).path)

File.open() does not support URIs.

Best wishes,
Fabian

Answer 3

Please use open-uri, its support both uri and local files

require 'open-uri'
contents  = open('http://www.google.com') {|f| f.read }