The Allrecipes Ruby Gem

A Ruby interface to the Allrecipes API. Allrecipes doesn't have an API, the requests are done using mechanize.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'allrecipes'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install allrecipes

Usage

Initialize scraper

recipes = Allrecipes.new

Get all recipes

recipes.all #default sorted by popularity, limit 20.

Get recipes by course

recipes.course("breakfast") #default sorted by popularity, limit 20.

List of courses:

[ "appetizer", "bread", "breakfast", "dessert", "drink","fruit", "herbs", "main", "salad", "soup", "meat", "pasta", "seafood", "wholegrains"]

Get recipes by region

recipes.region("european") #default sorted by popularity, limit 20.

Specific options available

recipes.region("french") #default sorted by popularity, limit 20.

List of regions available:

[
  "asian"
    "chinese" 
    "thai" 
    "japanese" 
    "filipino" 
    "korean" 
    "vietnamese" 
    "malaysian" 
    "pakistani" 
    "indonesian" 
    "iranian" 
    "bangladeshi" 
    "indian" 

  "african"
    "african_main"
    "moroccan"
    "south_african"
    "egyptian"

  "australian"

  "canadian"
    "vancouver" 
    "toronto" 
    "quebec" 

  "european"
    "italian"
    "uk"
    "french"
    "greek"
    "eastern_european"
    "german"
    "scandinavian"
    "spanish"
    "portuguese"
    "dutch"
    "austrian"
    "swiss"
    "belgian"

  "latin_american"
    "mexican" 
    "caribbean" 
    "south_american" 

  "middle_eastern"
    "lebanese" 
    "turkish" 
    "israeli" 
]

Get recipes by ingredient

recipes.ingredient("apples") #default sorted by relevance, limit 21.

Passing options to search

#all, #region, #course, #ingredient all accept an options hash with the following paramters: limit, page, sort_by & keys.

Limit

Default & max limit is 20 for #all, #region & #course. Defaut & max limit is 21 for #ingredient.

recipes.all({ limit: 10 })
recipes.ingredient("apples", { limit: 10 })

Page

For pagination it's as simple as passing the page number. If there are no results specified for that page, a blank array will be returned.

recipes.all({ limit: 5, page: 3 }) #first 5 results from the 3rd page.
recipes.course("dessert", { page: 2 }) #20 results from page 2.

Sort_By

#all, #region, #course are default sorted by popularity. Options available are popularity, date(newest first) and title(ascending). If mentioned outside of this scope, will resort to default(popularity).

recipes.all({ page: 5, sort_by: "date" })
recipes.region("german", { sort_by: "title", limit: 10 })

Keys

The default return keys are displayed in the sample response, however you can tweak them for your preference.

recipes.all({ keys: ["name", "image"] }) #the response will include only name & image.

#ingredient search is default sorted by relevance. Options available are relevance, popularity and rating. If mentioned outside of this scope, will resort to default(relevance).

recipes.ingredient("apples", { sort_by: "rating", page: 3, keys: ["name"] })

Get recipe from url

recipes.recipe_url("http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Worlds-Best-Lasagna")

This method takes an optional 2nd argument, an array of return keys.

recipes.recipe_url("http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Worlds-Best-Lasagna", ["prep_time", "servings"])

Get recipes from a page which has a collection of recipes

recipes.page_url("http://allrecipes.com/recipes?Page=7")

This method takes an optional 2nd argument, an array of return keys.

recipes.page_url("http://allrecipes.com/recipes?Page=7", ["ingredients", "directions"])

Sample response

[
    {
      :name => "Lasagna",
      :image => "http://images.media-allrecipes.com/userphotos/250x250/00/03/24/32427.jpg",
      :servings => 12,
      :ingredients =>
        [
          {
            :quantity => 1.0,
            :unit     => "pound", 
            :name     => "ground beef"
          }
        ],
     :directions => 
       [
         {
           "Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil"
         }
       ]
      :rating => 5.0,   #number between 0 and 5, rounded to the nearest .5
      :prep_time => 90, #in minutes
      :cook_time => 60  #in minutes
    }
]

Todo

1. Complex search with queries such as multiple ingredients, course, time etc.
2. Faster test suite
3. Add nutrional info to results.
4. Add user photos for recipe to results
5. Ability to get popular recipes of the day.