@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ This gem scrapes planning applications data from UK council/local planning autho
This scraper gem doesn't use a database. Storing the output is up to you. It's just a convenient way to get the data.
Currently this only works for some Idox sites. The ultimate aim is to provide a consistent interface in a single gem for all variants of all planning systems: Idox Public Access, Northgate Planning Explorer, OcellaWeb, and all the one-off systems.
Currently this only works for Idox and Northgate sites. The ultimate aim is to provide a consistent interface in a single gem for all variants of all planning systems: Idox Public Access, Northgate Planning Explorer, OcellaWeb, Agile Planning and all the one-off systems.
This project is not affiliated with any organisation.
@@ -29,34 +29,144 @@ Or install it yourself as:
## Usage
### First, require your stuff
```ruby
require 'uk_planning_scraper'
require 'date'
require 'pp'
```
# change this to the URL of the advanced search page for the council you want
pp apps # You'll probably want to save `apps` to your database here
end
```
Yes, we just scraped the last week's planning decisions across the whole of London (actually 23 of the 35 authorities right now) with five lines of code.
Try [ScraperWiki](https://github.com/openaustralia/scraperwiki-ruby) if you want a quick and easy way to throw the results into an SQLite database:
### Save to a SQLite database
This gem has no interest whatsoever in persistence. What you do with the data it outputs is up to you: relational databases, document stores, VHS and clay tablets are all blissfully none of its business. But using the [ScraperWiki](https://github.com/openaustralia/scraperwiki-ruby) gem is a really easy way to store your data:
```ruby
require 'scraperwiki' # Must be installed, of course
The easiest way to add to or edit this list is to edit within GitHub (use the pencil icon) and create a new pull request for your changes. If accepted, your changes will be available to everyone with the next version of the gem.
The file format is one line per authority, with comma-separated:
- Name (omit "the", "council", "borough of", "city of", etc. and write "and" not "&", except for `City of London` which is a special case)
- URL of the search form (use the advanced search URL if there is one)
- Tags (use as many comma-separated tags as is reasonable, lowercase and all one word.)
Currently only Idox and Northgate scrapers work but feel free to add authorities that use other systems, along with appropriate system tags like `ocellaweb` and `agileplanning`. This gem selects the appropriate scraper by examining the URL not by looking at the tags, so it doesn't matter what you use as long as it's consistent with others.
Please check the tag list before you change anything: