Open Source Ruby Web Scrapers

Wombat is a lightweight web crawling and scraping library written in Ruby that focuses on extracting structured data from web pages using a concise domain-specific language (DSL). It is designed to simplify the process of defining how information should be collected from HTML documents without requiring large amounts of scraping boilerplate code. Developers can declare the data fields they want and specify selectors or rules for retrieving them, allowing Wombat to parse and return structured results. The DSL approach helps make scraping definitions more readable and maintainable, especially when dealing with multiple fields or nested data structures. Because it is implemented as a Ruby library, it integrates easily into Ruby applications and scripts that need to gather information from web pages. Wombat also includes examples and tests that demonstrate how scraping definitions can be written and executed within Ruby environments.

Kimurai is an open source web scraping framework written in Ruby that simplifies the process of building automated data extraction tools. It provides a clean domain-specific language that allows developers to define scraping logic and data schemas with minimal boilerplate code. Kimurai can use AI-assisted extraction to identify where data resides in HTML pages, automatically generating selectors that are cached for future use so subsequent scraping runs operate with pure Ruby performance. Kimurai supports scraping both static and JavaScript-rendered websites by working with multiple engines, including headless browsers and simple HTTP-based approaches. Developers can also interact with pages using browser automation features such as form filling, clicking elements, or navigating through dynamic content. It includes tools for scheduling, parallel scraping, and structured data output, making it suitable for building reliable large-scale crawlers.