acant / library_cal

A Ruby gem to scrape public library web interfaces and create a simple iCal stream of your due dates.

LibraryCal

A Ruby gem to scrape public library web interfaces and create a simple iCal stream of your due dates. The intended usage is to run the gem periodically, with cron for exampke, and save the resulting iCal stream to a location where you calendar can read it.

The command-line arguments are:

 library_cal LIBRARY_NAME [ARGUMENTS]

Currently supports the following libraries:

• Kitchener Public Library (KPL)
  • library_cal kpl NAME BARCODE PIN

Research

• Mechanize
  • http://www.qualifilms.com/blog/computer-science/2009/09/ruby-and-web-scrapingautomation/
  • http://rubygems.org/gems/mechanize
• icalendar
  • http://icalendar.rubyforge.org/

Backlog

• add logout to the KPL handler
• add handler for Waterloo Public Library
• add handler for Toronto Public Library
• add option to include the libraries and arguments into a YAML file
• add option for specifying a file in an argument, instead of STDOUT
• allow multiple libraries in one ical feed
• review and improve exception handling
• add a spec for LibraryCal.run
• add documentation and sample configuration about how to run the gem
• add a Cucumber test for the CLI (try using Aruba)