# Download a comic strip and email to myself with Ruby? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [May 26, 2009, 10:54am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/download-a-comic-strip-and-email-to-myself-with-ruby/168813 "2009-05-26T10:54:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/winterheat)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 10:54am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/download-a-comic-strip-and-email-to-myself-with-ruby/168813/1 "2009-05-26T10:54:22Z")
using Ruby on my local Windows machine, can I easily write a script to download a comic strip every day and email it to myself? such as [http://comics.com/peanuts](http://comics.com/peanuts) ---
**Author:** ![winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/winterheat)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 11:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/download-a-comic-strip-and-email-to-myself-with-ruby/168813/2 "2009-05-26T11:04:32Z")
On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 10:54 AM, SpringFlowers AutumnMoon [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > using Ruby on my local Windows machine, can I easily write a script to > download a comic strip every day and email it to myself? > > such as > [http://comics.com/peanuts](http://comics.com/peanuts) Yes Andrew T. [http://ramblingsonrails.com](http://ramblingsonrails.com) [http://MyMvelope.com](http://MyMvelope.com) - The SIMPLE way to manage your savings ---
**Author:** ![winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/winterheat)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 8:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/download-a-comic-strip-and-email-to-myself-with-ruby/168813/3 "2009-05-26T20:58:39Z")
I would use Hpricot to parse the HTML and get the image, then any of the Ruby email libraries to send it to yourself. It’s really a trivial problem, but if you’re having specific issues, I’m sure many of the people on this list would be willing to help. Alex ---
**Author:** ![winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/winterheat)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 8:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/download-a-comic-strip-and-email-to-myself-with-ruby/168813/4 "2009-05-26T20:44:27Z")
Andrew T. wrote: > On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 10:54 AM, SpringFlowers AutumnMoon > [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > using Ruby on my local Windows machine, can I easily write a script to > > download a comic strip every day and email it to myself? > > > > such as > > [http://comics.com/peanuts](http://comics.com/peanuts) > > Yes how is it done? ---
**Author:** ![winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/winterheat)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 9:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/download-a-comic-strip-and-email-to-myself-with-ruby/168813/5 "2009-05-26T21:12:09Z")
On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 8:57 PM, Alex [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I would use Hpricot to parse the HTML and get the image, then any of the > Ruby email libraries to send it to yourself. It’s really a trivial problem, > but if you’re having specific issues, I’m sure many of the people on this > list would be willing to help. > > Alex Even easier, find out how the images are named because they are often named yyyymmdd.jpg or similar and then just try and pull the image for the day in question. 404 - no image 200 - you’ve got it Andrew T. [http://ramblingsonrails.com](http://ramblingsonrails.com) [http://MyMvelope.com](http://MyMvelope.com) - The SIMPLE way to manage your savings ---
**Author:** ![winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/winterheat)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 9:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/download-a-comic-strip-and-email-to-myself-with-ruby/168813/6 "2009-05-26T21:30:14Z")
Jian L. wrote: > using Ruby on my local Windows machine, can I easily write a script to > download a comic strip every day and email it to myself? > > such as > [http://comics.com/peanuts](http://comics.com/peanuts) As for downloading a file: > **[Downloading a file](http://al2o3-cr.blogspot.com/2008/08/downloading-file.html)** > > Today we will download a Garfield comic strip. We will not display it, as displaying is a whole lot harder, it needs a window and so on, may... ---
**Author:** ![winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/winterheat)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 9:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/download-a-comic-strip-and-email-to-myself-with-ruby/168813/7 "2009-05-26T21:15:38Z")
Alex wrote: > I would use Hpricot to parse the HTML and get the image, then any of the > Ruby email libraries to send it to yourself. It’s really a trivial > problem, > but if you’re having specific issues, I’m sure many of the people on > this > list would be willing to help. is it true that we just use the [smtp.my-isp.com](http://smtp.my-isp.com) to send it? is there any other way? ---
**Author:** ![winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/winterheat)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2009, 9:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/download-a-comic-strip-and-email-to-myself-with-ruby/168813/8 "2009-05-26T21:56:11Z")
You can use any SMTP server to email the images. I would just use Net::SMTP with whatever SMTP server you happen to be using. It’s true that some ISPs offer SMTP servers, but smtp.\.com may not be the naming convention that your ISP uses. Remember, you’re going to need to attach the image to the email as well, so you’ll need to create a multipart message, with the image data encoded in base64. I’m sure there’s a library that can handle that for you, although I’m not very familiar with using ruby to manipulate email messages. Alex