stackoverflow_monitoring_script.rb

#!/usr/bin/ruby

require 'rubygems'
require 'nokogiri'
require 'open-uri'
require 'growl'

# Configuration
#
# URL to get questions from
# Newest => 'http://stackoverflow.com/questions?sort=newest'
# Ruby Tagged => 'http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged?tagnames=ruby&sort=newest'
# Ruby + RoR Tagged => 'http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged?tagnames=ruby+or+ruby-on-rails&sort=newest' 
url = 'http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged?tagnames=ruby+or+ruby-on-rails&sort=newest'

# Refresh rate in seconds
refresh_rate = 120

# Sticky Growl notifications?
sticky_notification = false

# Code goes here
saved_questions = []
while true
  begin
    temp_questions = []
    doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open(url))
    doc.css('.question-summary').each do |question_div|
      question_div.css('.summary h3 a').each do |link|
        question_id = question_div.attributes['id'].to_s.split("-").last
        temp_questions << question_id 
        unless saved_questions.include? question_id
          #msg = "#{link.content} \n http://www.stackoverflow.com/questions/#{question_id}"
          Growl.notify_ok link.content , :title => 'StackOverflow - New Question', :sticky => sticky_notification
        end
      end
    end
    saved_questions = temp_questions
    sleep refresh_rate
  rescue SystemExit, Interrupt
    exit
  rescue Exception => e
    puts e
  end
end