More Ruby libs: I’ve just released the first version of HtmlClipping. HtmlClipping reads an HTML page that has a link pointing to a particular URI. It removes most HTML markup, bolds the link text, and trims the resulting text to a fixed number of characters. I developed it to help me track referers to my website, though I suppose it might have other uses.

For example, the following script gets the HTML at http://rubyforge.org/credits/, and forms an excerpt around the link to http://www.rubycentral.org/pledge/.

require 'htmlclipping'
require 'net/http'

contents = ''
Net::HTTP.start( 'rubyforge.org' ) do |http|
  response = http.get '/credits/'
  contents = response.body
end
clipping = HtmlClipping.new(
  contents, 'http://www.rubycentral.org/pledge/', 500
)
puts clipping.to_s

=> "… RubyForge takes time, effort, and money. Many thanks to the
   folks listed below who are making it possible! <br /> If RubyForge has
   been helpful to you, and you want to give something back to the Ruby
   community, please consider supporting <strong>RubyCentral</strong>.
   Thanks! <br /> InfoEther, Inc purchased the RubyForge hardware and
   provides system administration support. <br /> Several folks provide
   file mirrors to help share the bandwidth load: <br /> Evan Webb <br />
   Dennis Oelkers <br /> Austin &#8230;"