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