# Cannot read a page with open-uri **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [April 26, 2007, 5:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cannot-read-a-page-with-open-uri/93015 "2007-04-26T17:37:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![xain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/x/82dd89/32.png) [@xain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/xain)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 5:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cannot-read-a-page-with-open-uri/93015/1 "2007-04-26T17:37:29Z")
open-uri have been working fine, until I used it to open [http://www.mov99.com/movie/poster/2002081800574.html](http://www.mov99.com/movie/poster/2002081800574.html), when it returned a empty string. I don’t know what is the problem. Is there any page that can not be open with open-uri? or I need some special argument to read it? ---
**Author:** ![xain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/x/82dd89/32.png) [@xain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/xain)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 7:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cannot-read-a-page-with-open-uri/93015/2 "2007-04-26T19:04:11Z")
I don’t have time to take a close look right now, but when I had this problem playing with web robots, it was first because some sites required a user-agent string from a common web browser. The internet says you can use open-uri as follows: open(uri, “User-Agent” =\> ‘Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)’ Or other user agent–the above is for Internet Explorer. Good luck, Dan ---
**Author:** ![xain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/x/82dd89/32.png) [@xain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/xain)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2007, 8:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cannot-read-a-page-with-open-uri/93015/3 "2007-04-26T20:44:03Z")
Dan Z. wrote: > open(uri, “User-Agent” =\> ‘Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT > 5.1)’ It works. Thanks