A simple book information scraper by ISBN....with images!

book_scraper.rb

require 'open-uri'
require 'nokogiri'

class BookScraper

  def self.find_book(isbn)

    # Query ISBNsearch and get resulting HTML page with book details
    book_page = Nokogiri::HTML(open("http://isbnsearch.org/isbn/#{isbn}"))
    book_info = Hash.new

    # Parse HTML with Nokogiri and store attributes in hash

    book_info[:title] = book_page.css('div.bookinfo h2').first.content

    book_info[:image] = book_page.css('div.thumbnail img').first['src']
    
    book_page.css('div.bookinfo p').each do |attrib|
    
      attributes = attrib.content.split(': ')
      
      key = attributes[0].downcase
      key = key.gsub /\s/, '_'      # Replace spaces and dashes with underscores
      key = key.gsub /-/, '_'
      key = key.gsub /list_/, ''    # Remove list_ for price attribute
      
      book_info[key.to_sym] = attributes[1].gsub /\$/, ''
    end

    # Return attribute hash
    book_info
  end
end

sample output

>> BookScraper.find_book 9780136039884
=> {:title=>"Study Guide for The Economic Way of Thinking", :image=>"http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51yoKYI9r3L._SL194_.jpg", :isbn_13=>"9780136039884", :isbn_10=>"013603988X", :authors=>"Paul Heyne; Peter J. Boettke; David L. Prychitko", :edition=>"12", :binding=>"Paperback", :publisher=>"Prentice Hall", :published=>"May 2009", :price=>"46.67"}