# Newbie-question: Type Conversion

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-type-conversion/131333>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 8, 2008, 6:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-type-conversion/131333 "2008-03-08T06:30:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![M\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c67d28/32.png) [@M\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/M_P)\
**Post date:** [March 8, 2008, 6:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-type-conversion/131333/1 "2008-03-08T06:30:57Z")

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I am using the Hpricot(which is awesome!) ruby module to do screen  
scraping. When I retrieve a list of search results, it returns a  
custom data type “Hpricot::Elements.” I am trying to treat this  
returned list as an array, but keep getting errors. How can I convert  
this to an array of my results? I have tried ‘.to\_a’ but that doesn’t  
work.

Thank You for your time. Here is a code example:

doc = Hpricot(open(“my url”))  
@conts = doc.search(“form[@name=‘form’]/div”)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![M\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/c67d28/32.png) [@M\_P](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/M_P)\
**Post date:** [March 8, 2008, 6:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-type-conversion/131333/2 "2008-03-08T06:40:55Z")

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Nevermind, I figured it out with:

@conts.methods.each { |x|  
puts “\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*” #for readability  
puts x  
puts “\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*”  
}