howdoi.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'nokogiri' # gem install nokogiri --no-document
require 'net/http'
require 'json'
require 'cgi'

# Suppose you want to know how to format a date in bash. Why open your browser and read through
# blogs (risking major distraction) when you can simply stay in the console and ask howdoi:
# $ ruby howdoi.rb format date bash
# > DATE=`date +%Y-%m-%d`
# This is a simple clone of https://github.com/gleitz/howdoi/
class HowDoI

  # more information in https://api.stackexchange.com/docs/answers-on-questions
  STACK_API_URL     = "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/questions/%{id}/answers?order=desc&sort=votes&site=stackoverflow&filter=!4*8OiBHomm4Ah26RX"
  GOOGLE_SEARCH_URL = "https://www.google.com/search?q=site:stackoverflow.com%20"

  def initialize(query)
    @query        = CGI.escape(query)
    get_code_block
  end

  def to_s
    @code_block
  end

private
  def get_code_block
    doc = Nokogiri::HTML( search_stack )
    @code_block = doc.css('code').collect { |node| node.text }[0].chomp
  end

  def search_stack
    body = Net::HTTP.get URI(STACK_API_URL % {id: search_google})
    JSON(body)['items'].first['body']
  end

  def search_google
    doc = Nokogiri::HTML Net::HTTP.get(URI(GOOGLE_SEARCH_URL + @query))

    links = []
    doc.css('li.g h3.r a').each do |result|
      links << URI.extract(result['href'])
    end

    get_questions_id(links.flatten.first)
  end

  def get_questions_id(url)
    matched = url.match(/\/(\d+)\//)
    matched[1]
  end
end

# Gets the query from commandline
puts HowDoI.new ARGV.join(' ')