# Hpricot Relative Path **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [March 12, 2010, 10:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hpricot-relative-path/185069 "2010-03-12T22:22:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jcain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jcain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jcain)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 10:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hpricot-relative-path/185069/1 "2010-03-12T22:22:39Z")
I’m trying to write a script that pulls out an image from a yfrog page So this is what I have require ‘rubygems’ require ‘hpricot’ require ‘open-uri’ url = ‘[ImageShack - Best place for all of your image hosting and image sharing needs](http://yfrog.com/03gssacj)’ doc = Hpricot(open(url)) (doc%“#main\_image”).attributes[‘src’] # =\> “/img3/7036/gssac.jpg” The problem is that the path is relative. I’ve done a little googling, queried my ruby and rails ML archives, glanced at hpricot code, and looked through the method lists for open-uri and hpricot. So far, I don’t see anything that looks very useful. Is there a way to have it give me the absolute path so that I can reference the picture later? The only thing I’ve found that works so far involves string manipulation, which seems like a brittle workaround to replace something that probably exists if I could just find it. url = ‘[ImageShack - Best place for all of your image hosting and image sharing needs](http://yfrog.com/03gssacj)’ page = open(url) base = page.base\_uri.to\_s[/(?:http://)?[^/]\*// ] # =\> " [http://img3.yfrog.com/](http://img3.yfrog.com/)" relative = (Hpricot(page)%“#main\_image”).attributes[‘src’] # =\> “/img3/7036/gssac.jpg” absolute = URI.join( base , relative ) absolute.to\_s # =\> “[http://img3.yfrog.com/img3/7036/gssac.jpg](http://img3.yfrog.com/img3/7036/gssac.jpg)” Anyone know of a better solution? ---
**Author:** ![jcain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jcain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jcain)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 10:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hpricot-relative-path/185069/2 "2010-03-12T22:54:51Z")
On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 1:22 PM, Josh C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > The problem is that the path is relative. > I’ve done a little googling, queried my ruby and rails ML archives, glanced > at hpricot code, and looked through the method lists for open-uri and > hpricot. > So far, I don’t see anything that looks very useful. > Is there a way to have it give me the absolute path so that I can reference > the picture later? Hpricot is just telling you what’s in the HTML. Munging the document’s contents are your responsibility, not the parser’s 🙂 > The only thing I’ve found that works so far involves string manipulation, > which seems like a brittle workaround to replace something that probably > exists if I could just find it. Look into the URI library. require ‘uri’ uri = URI.parse( “[ImageShack - Best place for all of your image hosting and image sharing needs](http://yfrog.com/03gssacj)” ) uri.path = # your hpricot magic to get the image path goes here Ben ---
**Author:** ![jcain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jcain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jcain)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2010, 12:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/hpricot-relative-path/185069/3 "2010-03-13T00:23:49Z")
On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 3:54 PM, Ben B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > uri = URI.parse( “[ImageShack - Best place for all of your image hosting and image sharing needs](http://yfrog.com/03gssacj)” ) > uri.path = # your hpricot magic to get the image path goes here > > Ben Thanks, this is what I am using now: page = open url image\_path = URI.parse page.base\_uri.to\_s.sub( %r(/$) , ‘’ ) image\_path.path = (Hpricot(page)%“#main\_image”).attributes[‘src’] image\_path.to\_s It still seems a little excessive, but it’s a lot better than what I had before.