# Screen Scraping an Image

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/screen-scraping-an-image/122018>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 3, 2007, 10:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/screen-scraping-an-image/122018 "2007-12-03T22:16:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![patternhunter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/71c47a/32.png) [@patternhunter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/patternhunter)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2007, 10:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/screen-scraping-an-image/122018/1 "2007-12-03T22:16:08Z")

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How do you screen scrape an image off of a web page?

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**Author:** ![patternhunter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/71c47a/32.png) [@patternhunter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/patternhunter)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2007, 10:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/screen-scraping-an-image/122018/2 "2007-12-03T22:25:30Z")

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On Dec 3, 2:10 pm, Sean K. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> How do you screen scrape an image off of a web page?

You find the URL of the image (possibly resolving a relative URL  
against the absolute URL of the page) and then ask the web server to  
send you that file over http.

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**Author:** ![patternhunter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/71c47a/32.png) [@patternhunter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/patternhunter)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2007, 11:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/screen-scraping-an-image/122018/3 "2007-12-03T23:26:24Z")

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On Dec 3, 2007 3:24 PM, Phrogz [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> On Dec 3, 2:10 pm, Sean K. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:
> 
> > How do you screen scrape an image off of a web page?
> 
> You find the URL of the image (possibly resolving a relative URL  
> against the absolute URL of the page) and then ask the web server to  
> send you that file over http.

I suspect Sean is asking, what’s the ruby way of doing a wget?

For example:

wget [http://www.ruby-lang.org/images/logo.gif](http://www.ruby-lang.org/images/logo.gif)

Regards,

- Robert

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**Author:** ![patternhunter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/71c47a/32.png) [@patternhunter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/patternhunter)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2007, 7:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/screen-scraping-an-image/122018/4 "2007-12-05T19:26:52Z")

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On Dec 3, 2007 8:39 PM, Sean K. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> }

Or maybe shorter:

require ‘open-uri’

open(‘image.jpg’, ‘wb’) {|f| f \<\< open(’  
[Website Domain Names, Online Stores & Hosting - Domain.com](http://www.domain.com/image.jpg)’).read }

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**Author:** ![patternhunter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/71c47a/32.png) [@patternhunter](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/patternhunter)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2007, 11:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/screen-scraping-an-image/122018/5 "2007-12-03T23:41:03Z")

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Here’s a script I found at  
[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)

require ‘net/http’

Net::HTTP.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)  
}  
}