Scrape YouTube thumbnails (See related posts)

// fun with mechanize
// more @ http://tramchase.com/scrape-myspace-youtube-torrents-for-fun-and-profit

agent = WWW::Mechanize.new
url = "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/standardfeeds/most_viewed" # all time
page = agent.get(url)
# parse again w/ Hpcricot for some XML convenience
doc = Hpricot.parse(page.body)
# pp (doc/:entry) # like "search"; cool division overload
images = (doc/'media:thumbnail') # use strings instead of symbols for namespaces
FileUtils.mkdir_p 'youtube-images' # make the images dir
urls = images.map { |i| i[:url] }
urls.each_with_index do |file,index|
  puts "Saving image #{file}"
  agent.get(file).save_as("youtube-images/vid#{index}_#{File.basename file}")
end