So, I love Hpricot because it feels like an extension of my hand.
Google (and Yahoo) have awesome human searchable queries like “people in china”.
The top most search result will show you the amount of people in china.
I quickly decided that this would be useless; however incredible to show my mad-ill flow with css selectors.
First, grab the gem from Rubyforge using:
sudo gem install google_query
Leap your ass into irb, require the gem and start screwing around
See how you get spanked by the pound
GoogleQuery::Currency.get 'AUD to GBP'
=> 1 U.S. dollar = 0.490484599 British pounds
Population in Melbourne
GoogleQuery::Population.get 'melbourne'
=> Population: 3,850,000 (Est.) (2nd)
Current time in London
GoogleQuery::Time.get 'london'
=> 2:26 PM on Monday, July 30
On the command line
bens-pb:~ ben$ gpop melbourne
=> Population: 3,850,000 (Est.) (2nd)
bens-pb:~ ben$ gtime london
=> 2:26 PM on Monday, July 30
I couldn’t resist naming it gmoney
bens-pb:~ ben$ gmoney AUD GBP
=> 1 Australian dollar = 0.424269178 British pounds
There you have it, my first gem ever.
Some queries may be broken, this could be due to google changing their search results screen or just no damn results.