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Making Easy Roommate Easy

Andrew Grimm
@andrewjgrimm

Easy Roommate

Web site where people can find accommodation, or vice versa

The Good

Profiles have structured data

Means you can determine whether a flat is unsuitable without contacting them

The Bad

You can't search only for places compatible with you

You can't hide or delete profiles you're not interested in

Profiles you've already read get bumped to the top when they get edited

The Ugly

Web scraping to the rescue!

Download and parse the profiles

Check whether they're already mentioned in your notes (plain text file)

Describe whether new ones are compatible or incompatible

Web scraping tools

Mechanize for getting past authentication

Nokogiri to parse the HTMLNot regular expressions sorry Cthulhu!

Ternary logic

Some fields have Not Disclosed in them

Rather than saying the profile meets your criteria or doesn't meet them, you can say it isn't known

Ternary_logic gem used

Coding considerations

Should code for parsing an object be separate from business logic for the object itself?

Some pages have different structures

One person may have an ad for each room in a unit how do you tell they're distinct? (Use their unique IDs)

Coding considerations II

Decided not to use a databaseToo lazy to install on all my computers

Currently only looking at some properties in a profileYAGNI

To do

Automate commute time calculation rather than manually visit 131500.com.au

Find a flat!@andrewjgrimm

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