Astro-Phys.com API in Ruby

gistfile1.rb

require 'open-uri'
require 'json' # For parsing the response into a hash

# As defined here http://www.astro-phys.com/api
call = 'coefficients' # note: '/api/de406/' is not needed
parameters = ['bodies=sun'] # e.g. ['bodies=venus', 'type=m']

# Converts parameters to query string
unless parameters.empty?
  parameters = parameters.join("&")
  parameters.insert(0, '?')
end

# Opens connection to server
query = open("http://www.astro-phys.com/api/de406/#{call}#{parameters unless parameters.empty?}")

# Reads the response (note: I belive this only reads one line, however as the response is json this
# should be ok)
response = query.read

query.close # Closes the connection

response = JSON.parse(response) # Parses the response

puts response['results'] # Random test