extract keywords from string

rubyonrails-talk
1

hi -

i have strings that i need to extract keywords from. the string might have html tags, urls, etc. i need to extract the keywords from the string. i imagine i'm not the first guy to have to tackle this problem. is there a gem i can use or anyone have any ideas how to approach this?

thanks, dino

2

Quoting dino d. <dinodorroco@yahoo.com>:

hi -

i have strings that i need to extract keywords from. the string might have html tags, urls, etc. i need to extract the keywords from the string. i imagine i'm not the first guy to have to tackle this problem. is there a gem i can use or anyone have any ideas how to approach this?

More detail needed about the keywords. The simple case is keywords regardless of context, separated by whitespace.

KEYWORDS = %{if else then end case when do def}

str = "if true then false else true end" str.split.find_all{|s| KEYWORDS.include?(s)}

irb(main):006:0> KEYWORDS = %{if else then end case when do def} => "if else then end case when do def" irb(main):007:0> str = "if true then false else true end" => "if true then false else true end" irb(main):008:0> str.split.find_all{|s| KEYWORDS.include?(s)} => ["if", "then", "else", "end"] irb(main):009:0>

If you need to exclude keywords inside strings, URLs, etc. the solution is more complex.

HTH,   Jeffrey

3

Jeff-

thanks for the reply. i can deal with context in a different method, in your solution, i still grab "<a>" and "test." and "&wow*&&" as keywords. i want to send this method a string, and get an array of letter-only words returned. if you have context ideas, i'd love to hear those too, but the first step is just harvesting only character words from strings.

thanks, dino

4

Many people are leaning toward Nokogiri (read: http://nokogiri.rubyforge.org/nokogiri/Nokogiri.html).

5

Agreed. With the disappearance of _why, the future of hpricot is uncertain.