# Image scraping from behind a proxy

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/image-scraping-from-behind-a-proxy/139492>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [June 4, 2008, 12:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/image-scraping-from-behind-a-proxy/139492 "2008-06-04T12:48:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![abhishek-gupta](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/90db22/32.png) [@abhishek-gupta](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/abhishek-gupta)\
**Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 12:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/image-scraping-from-behind-a-proxy/139492/1 "2008-06-04T12:48:56Z")

</div>

Hi,

I was looking at this post in the forum for downloading image files from  
the www:  
[http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/133833](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/133833)

But it doesnt work for me, apparently because I am behind a proxy. For  
the above code(s) I get errors like the following:

c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:564:in `initialize': No connection could be mad e because the target machine actively refused it. - connect(2) (Errno::ECONNREFU SED) from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:564:in `open’  
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:564:in `connect' from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:48:in `timeout’  
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:76:in `timeout' from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:564:in `connect’  
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:557:in `do_start' from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:546:in `start’  
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:243:in `open_http' ... 7 levels... from test.rb:48:in `write\_images’  
from test.rb:45:in `each' from test.rb:45:in `write\_images’  
from test.rb:76

I had run into similar problems when I had tried to obtain a http  
response. Back then I started doing this (which works perfectly for me):

$proxy\_addr = ‘proxyservername’  
$proxy\_port = 8080  
$proxy=Net::HTTP::Proxy($proxy\_addr, $proxy\_port)

http\_query=“[http://www.yahoo.com](http://www.yahoo.com)”  
url = URI.parse(http\_query)  
http\_response = $proxy.get\_response(url)

Is there something similar I can do for obtaining image files? I did  
tweak the above code to have a http image file location in the  
http\_query and store the http\_response.body into a normal file. Though  
that didnt give me any errors, my jpeg is unreadable. ☹

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![abhishek-gupta](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/90db22/32.png) [@abhishek-gupta](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/abhishek-gupta)\
**Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 1:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/image-scraping-from-behind-a-proxy/139492/2 "2008-06-04T13:11:34Z")

</div>

While I was writing my query I figured out what I am supposed to do 🙂  
Sorry for the thread. I hope it helps other visitors to the forum.

Here’s how it works now:

$proxy\_addr = ‘proxyservername’  
$proxy\_port = 8080

Net::HTTP::Proxy($proxy\_addr, $proxy\_port).start(“[static.flickr.com](http://static.flickr.com)”) {  
|http|  
resp = http.get(“/92/218926700\_ecedc5fef7\_o.jpg”)  
open(“fun.jpg”, “wb”) { |file|  
file.write(resp.body)  
}  
}

The above is tweaked version of the example available here:  
[http://www.rubynoob.com/articles/2006/8/21/how-to-download-files-with-a-ruby-script](http://www.rubynoob.com/articles/2006/8/21/how-to-download-files-with-a-ruby-script)

It just uses Net::HTTP::Proxy instead of Net::HTTP