# Screen scraping message boards

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/screen-scraping-message-boards/136563>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [May 3, 2008, 6:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/screen-scraping-message-boards/136563 "2008-05-03T18:24:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jbaty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jbaty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jbaty)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2008, 6:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/screen-scraping-message-boards/136563/1 "2008-05-03T18:24:10Z")

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Hi all,  
I’m trying to scrap (screen scraping) some message board  
(e.g. yahoo finance, or any forum, etc.)  
I’m trying to use ruby to do so, but still don’t know how  
to go over messages in the same html page and extract them into file

thanks in advance  
J.

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**Author:** ![jbaty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jbaty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jbaty)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2008, 6:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/screen-scraping-message-boards/136563/2 "2008-05-03T18:30:05Z")

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On 3 May 2008, at 17:24, Jack Brown wrote:

> Hi all,  
> I’m trying to scrap (screen scraping) some message board  
> (e.g. yahoo finance, or any forum, etc.)  
> I’m trying to use ruby to do so, but still don’t know how  
> to go over messages in the same html page and extract them into file

Hpricot is pretty nifty for parsing html

Fred

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jbaty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jbaty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jbaty)\
**Post date:** [May 4, 2008, 6:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/screen-scraping-message-boards/136563/3 "2008-05-04T06:06:50Z")

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Frederick C. wrote:

> Hpricot is pretty nifty for parsing html
> 
> Fred

This blog entry helped me get started:  
[http://www.igvita.com/2007/02/04/ruby-screen-scraper-in-60-seconds/](http://www.igvita.com/2007/02/04/ruby-screen-scraper-in-60-seconds/)

After that, I worked through the specifics of the page that I was  
scraping.

Cheers,  
Mohit.  
5/4/2008 | 12:04 PM.