A simple scrapper with ruby mechanize

require 'rubygems'
require 'mechanize'

mech = WWW::Mechanize.new { |agent|
    agent.user_agent_alias = 'Mac Safari'
    }

def getNames(page) 
    results = []
    rows = page.root.xpath('//table[@cellspacing="3"]/tr') 
    1.upto(rows.length() - 1 ) { |i|
                             results.push(rows[i].search("td").first.text.lstrip.rstrip)
                            }
    return results
end

def getMaleNames(mech)
    results = []
    page = mech.get("http://names.mongabay.com/male_names.htm")
    results.concat(getNames(page))
    namelinks = []
    page.links.each{ |link|
        if ( /\/male_names\d/ =~ link.href)  
            namelinks.push(link.href)
        end
        }
    namelinks.each { |url|
                    page = mech.get(url)
                    results.concat(getNames(page))
                    }
    return results
end

def getFemaleNames(mech)
    results = []
    page = mech.get("http://names.mongabay.com/female_names.htm")
    results.concat(getNames(page))
    namelinks = []
    page.links.each{ |link|
        if ( /\/female_names\d/ =~ link.href)  
            namelinks.push(link.href)
        end
        }
    namelinks.each { |url|
                    page = mech.get(url)
                    results.concat(getNames(page))
                    }
    return results
end

def getSurnames(mech)
    results = []
    1.upto(10).each { |i|
                     page = mech.get(sprintf("http://names.mongabay.com/data/%d000.html", i))
                     rows = page.root.xpath('//table[@class="boldtable"]/tr')
                    1.upto(rows.length() - 1) { |i|
                        results.push(rows[i].search("td").first.text.lstrip.rstrip)
                        }
                    }
    return results
end

puts "get male names"
File.open("malenames.txt", "a+") { |file|
    getMaleNames(mech).each { |name|
        file << name << "\n"
        }
    }

puts "get female names"
File.open("femalenames.txt", "a+") { |file|
    getFemaleNames(mech).each { |name|
        file << name << "\n"
        }
    }

puts "get surnames"
File.open("surnames.txt", "a+") { |file|
    getSurnames(mech).each { |name|
        file << name << "\n"
        }
    }