Question

I am having an array like “author”,”post title”,”date”,”time”,”post category”, etc etc

I scrape the details from a forum and I want to

• save the data using ruby
• update the data using ruby
• update the data using text editor or I was thinking of one of OpenOffice programs? Calc would be the best.

I guess to have some kind of SQL database would be a solution but I need quick solution for that (somthing that I can do by myself 🙂

any suggestions?

Thank you

Answer 1

If you want to use a spreadsheet, csv is the way to go. You can use the stdlib csv api like:

require 'csv'

my2DArray = [[1,2],["foo","bar"]]

File.open('data.csv', 'w') do |outfile|
  CSV::Writer.generate(outfile) do |csv|
    my2DArray.each do |row|
      csv << row
    end
  end
end

You can then open the resulting file in calc or in most statistics applications.

The same API can be used to re-import the result in ruby if you need.