This parses an rss feed for dates that could be used to form an ical

rss_to_ical.rb

# rss_to_ical.rb
#
# This parses a (specific) rss feed for dates that could be used to form an ical

require 'nokogiri'
require 'open-uri'
require 'time'

# Configuration
url = "http://melbournepatterns.org/feed/"
xpath = "//item//title"
regex = /<title>Next meeting: ([^)]*)<\/title>/

doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open(url))

doc.xpath(xpath).each do |node|
 node.to_s.scan(regex) do |matches|

   # Create Date object to use in the ical
   date = Time.parse(matches[0])

   puts "#{matches[0]} == #{date.to_s}"
 end
end