Searching the Web with Googles SOAP Service

Problem

You want to use Googles web services to perform searches and grab their results within your Ruby application.

Solution

Google exposes a SOAP API to its search functionality, and some other miscellaneous methods like spellcheck. Call these methods with the SOAP client that comes with Rubys standard library:

$KCODE = u # This lets us parse UTF characters require soap/wsdlDriver class Google @@key = JW/JqyXMzCsv7k/dxqR9E9HF+jiSgbDL # Get a key at http://www.google.com/apis/ @@driver = SOAP::WSDLDriverFactory. new(http://api.google.com/GoogleSearch.wsdl).create_rpc_driver def self.search(query, options={}) @@driver.doGoogleSearch( @@key, query, options[:offset] || 0, options[:limit] || 10, # Note that this value cannot exceed 10 options[:filter] || true, options[:restricts] || , options[:safe_search] || false, options[:lr] || , options[:ie] || , options[:oe] || ) end def self.count(query, options={}) search(query, options).estimatedTotalResultsCount end def self.spell(phrase) @@driver.doSpellingSuggestion(@@key, phrase) end end

Here it is in action:

Google.count "Ruby Cookbook site:oreilly.com" # => 368 results = Google.search "Ruby Cookbook site:oreilly.com", :limit => 7 results.resultElements.size # => 7 results.resultElements.first["title"] # => "oreilly.com -- Online Catalog: Ruby Cookbook…" results.resultElements.first["URL"] # => "http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/rubyckbk/" results.resultElements.first["snippet"] # => "The Ruby Cookbook is a new addition to …" Google.spell "tis is te centence" # => "this is the sentence"

Discussion

Each of the options defined in Google.search corresponds to an option in the Google search API.

See Also

• For a simpler API, see Recipe 16.7, "Using a WSDL File to Make SOAP Calls Easier"
• http://www.google.com/apis/reference.html
• http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html