Wayback Gem

A Ruby interface to Archive.org's Wayback Machine Memento API.

Installation

gem install wayback

Quick Start Guide

Accessing the Wayback Machine is super-duper easy.

require 'wayback'
Wayback.page('http://www.xolator.com', :first)

Documentation

You can browse the Rdoc here.

Configuration

There is no real configuration necessary for accessing the Wayback Machine Memento API, however you can change endpoint and other basic connection options.

The current defaults configurations for this gem are:

Wayback.configure do |c|
  c.endpoint = 'http://web.archive.org'
  c.endpoint_path = '/web'
  c.json_endpoint = 'http://archive.org'
  c.json_endpoint_path = '/wayback'
  c.connection_options = {
    :headers  => {:user_agent => "Wayback Ruby Gem #{Wayback::Version}"},
    :request  => {:open_timeout => 5, :timeout => 10},
    :ssl      => {:verify => false},
  }
  c.identiy_map = false
  c.middleware = Faraday::Builder.new do |builder|
    # Convert request params to "www-form-urlencoded"
    builder.use Faraday::Request::UrlEncoded
    # Follow redirects
    builder.use FaradayMiddleware::FollowRedirects
    # Handle 4xx server responses
    builder.use Wayback::Response::RaiseError, Wayback::Error::ClientError
    # Handle 5xx server responses
    builder.use Wayback::Response::RaiseError, Wayback::Error::ServerError
    # Parse closest available JSON result
    builder.use Wayback::Response::ParseAvailablity
    # Parse memento page
    builder.use Wayback::Response::ParseMementoPage
    # Parse link-format with custom memento parser
    builder.use Wayback::Response::ParseMemento
    # Set Faraday's HTTP adapter
    builder.adapter Faraday.default_adapter
  end

Usage Examples

Fetch the timeline of archived pages

Wayback.list('http://www.xolator.com')

Fetch closest known page to a specified date

Wayback.available('http://www.xolator.com', 20130613055153)
Wayback.available('http://www.xolator.com', :first)
Wayback.available('http://www.xolator.com', :last)

Fetch a specific archived page

Wayback.page('http://www.xolator.com', 20130613055153)
Wayback.page('http://www.xolator.com', :first)
Wayback.page('http://www.xolator.com', :last)

Additional Notes

Based heavily on the Twitter gem. (Xièxie!)

More information on Archive's Wayback Machine memento API can be found here.

wayback

Development

Runtime