electiondata.tsv

electionscraper.rb

require "open-uri"
require "rubygems"
require "nokogiri"

html = Nokogiri(open("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_elections_overview").read)
tables = html.css("table")[1..-1]

Datum = Struct.new(:name, :year, :seats, :popular)

def header(table)
  table.css("th").map{|x| x.text}.join("|")
end

def parse_table(table)
  unless block_given?
    results = []
    parse_table{|d| results << d}
    return results
  end

  rows = table.css("tr")
  years = rows[0].css("td")[1..-1].map(&:text).map(&:to_i)

  data_rows = rows[2..-1]

  data_rows.each do |row|
    columns = row.css("td")
    name = columns[0].text
    data = columns[1..-1].map{|x| x.text.strip}.each_slice(2).to_a
   
    data.each_with_index do |(popular, seats), i|
      if popular != "-" && seats != "-"
        yield Datum.new(name, years[i], seats, popular) 
      end
    end   
  end
end

puts "Name\tYear\tSeats won\tPercentage of popular vote"

tables.each do |t|
  parse_table(t){ |d| puts [d.name, d.year, d.seats,d.popular].join("\t") }
end