is mechanize one of the most popular libraries for automating web site interactions in Ruby?

Question

It's been a while since I've needed to automate a bit of web site interaction and just wanted to check there isn't now some more highly used/newer alternative...

Have you tried checking Ruby Toolbox? – Andrew Grimm Mar 11 '12 at 21:00 — Andrew Grimm, Mar 11 '12 at 21:00
yep - didn't seem to have a category – Greg Mar 11 '12 at 23:13 — Greg, Mar 11 '12 at 23:13

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 11 '12 at 07:57

2

The last I checked (about 3 months ago), mechanize was still the most popular library and was what I ended up using (though I did have a random HTTPS error that I never fixed on my development machine).

answered Mar 11 '12 at 07:57

Waynn Lue

11,344
8
51
76

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 06 '13 at 19:21

It's also worthwhile to note that Mechanize was originally written in Perl, and that there's both a Ruby and a Python implementation.

And yes, Ruby's flavor of Mechanize is the most active, and probably the most popular library for automating web site interactions.

Take a look at the stars or the code frequency for the different projects (according to GitHub as of Feb 2013):

Ruby Mechanize (~1300 stars, lots of code committed in 2012)

Python Mechanize (~260 stars, not much code committed in 2012)

Perl Mechanize (~30 stars, some code committed in 2012)

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 11 '12 at 08:07

1

In terms of popularity, nothing else even comes close. There are some other interesting projects but the only time I consider using something other than mechanize is when there's lots of javascript, and on those occasions it's watir-webdriver.

answered Mar 11 '12 at 08:07

pguardiario

53,827
19
119
159

is mechanize one of the most popular libraries for automating web site interactions in Ruby?

3 Answers3