Get recipes from chefkoch.de using ruby | Part 2

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Even it’s quite a while ago since part 1, I want to finish up this micro series about the chefkoch api.
As you may remember, we are able to search for recipes, whose titles are matching our search string.
Unfortunatly, the api response is not serving any link to the recipe itself.
So let’s fix this and add this url directly to our method’s result!

First we need to find out, how the recipe urls are built.
By checking some recipes on their site, we can see that recipe urls are built like that:

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http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/:id

Now we could extend our search method by telling it to call a method named “append_recipe_link” and passing our response to that method:

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require 'net/http'
require 'json'
require 'uri'

module ChefkochApi
  @api_url = "http://api.chefkoch.de/api/1.0/api-recipe-search.php"
  @rezept_url = "http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/" # this is new

  def self.search(search_text)
    # ... stil the same stuff
    response = Net::HTTP.get_response(url)

    self.append_recipe_link response
  end

  private

  # our new helper method
  def self.append_recipe_link(response)
    # here comes some JSON magic to extract only the relevant information from the json response
    JSON.parse(response.body.strip)["result"].each do |r|
      r["RezeptUrl"] = @rezept_url + r["RezeptShowID"]
    end
  end
end

And there you go. Your results should now have a url linking directly to the recipe show page.

The last thing I want to show is, how you get more detailed information about your recipes.
I am using another method for that, which does another api call. Please note the aditional api url at the top.

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require 'net/http'
require 'json'
require 'uri'

module ChefkochApi
  @api_url = "http://api.chefkoch.de/api/1.0/api-recipe-search.php"
  @api_rezept_url = "http://api.chefkoch.de/api/1.0/api-recipe.php"
  @rezept_url = "http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/"

  def self.search(search_text)
    # ...
  end

  # here we go
  def self.show_recipe(id)
    # Remember "RezeptShowID" from our JSON response?
    # Thats the id which gets passed to this method here
    params = {}
    params["ID"] = id

    url = URI.parse @api_rezept_url
    url.query = URI.encode_www_form(params)

    response = Net::HTTP.get_response(url)
    JSON.parse(response.body.strip)["result"]
  end

  private

  def self.append_recipe_link(response)
    # ...
  end
end

This gives us more detailed information about a recipe in response:

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{
  "api":{
    "version":1.2
  },
    "total":1,
    "result":[
    {
      "rezept_id":"101077",
      "rezept_show_id":"1010771206206427",
      "rezept_name":"Apple Pie",
      "rezept_name2":"",
      "rezept_zubereitung":"Mehl, Butter, Zucker, Zitronenschale (oder wahlweise eine Packung Citroback), Salz und die Eigelbe mischen und zu einem Teig verkneten. \r\n\r\nDie \u00c4pfel sch\u00e4len und in St\u00fccke schneiden, mit etwas Zucker und Wasser in einem Topf 5 min. kochen lassen (nach Geschmack noch ein wenig zerdr\u00fccken), die Masse abk\u00fchlen lassen. \r\n\r\nDen Teig in zwei St\u00fccke teilen. Den gr\u00f6\u00dferen Teil ausrollen und die Form (ca 20 cm Durchmesser) damit auslegen. Nun die abgek\u00fchlte Masse auf dem Teig verteilen. Den Rest des Teiges ausrollen und oben auf die Apfelmasse legen. An den Seiten andr\u00fccken. Das Ganze wird nun mit einem Eigelb (gemischt mit etwas Wasser) bestrichen.\r\n\r\nDas Ganze im vorgeheizten Ofen bei 180\u00b0C 45 \u0096 50 min. backen lassen. Am besten noch warm genie\u00dfen.",
      "rezept_portionen":"1",
      "rezept_preparation_time":45,
      "rezept_cooking_time":0,
      "rezept_resting_time":60,
      "rezept_schwierigkeit":"simpel",
      "rezept_kcal":"0",
      "rezept_user_id":"3733fd403a13fb5f951c2369ae1acd22",
      "rezept_user_name":"KaThePrincess",
      "rezept_datum":"1206640697",
      "rezept_videos":[

        ],
      "rezept_in_rezeptsammlung":[
      {
        "sammlungs_id":"946538",
        "sammlungs_name":"Apfelkuchen",
        "sammlungs_link":"\/rezeptsammlung\/946538\/Apfelkuchen.html"
      },
      {
        "sammlungs_id":"1803978",
        "sammlungs_name":"Kuchen und andere s\u00fc\u00dfe sachen",
        "sammlungs_link":"\/rezeptsammlung\/1803978\/Kuchen-und-andere-suesse-sachen.html"
      }
      ],
        "rezeptsammlungen_link":"\/rezeptsammlung\/0,30\/1010771206206427\/",
        "rezept_zutaten_is_basic":[
          "71",
        "70",
        "83",
        "6",
        "247"
          ],
        "rezept_zutaten":[
        {
          "id":"71",
          "name":"Mehl",
          "eigenschaft":"",
          "cominfo":"0",
          "ist_basic":"1",
          "menge":"225",
          "einheit":"g",
          "menge_berechnet":225,
          "has_additional_info":false
        },
        {
          "id":"70",
          "name":"Butter",
          "eigenschaft":"",
          "cominfo":"0",
          "ist_basic":"1",
          "menge":"140",
          "einheit":"g",
          "menge_berechnet":140,
          "has_additional_info":false
        },

      and so on and so on ...

      ],
        "rezept_tags":[
          "Backen",
        "Kuchen",
        "USA oder Kanada",
        "Weihnachten"
          ],
        "rezept_user_portionen":"1",
        "rezept_votes":{
          "average":3.3333,
          "img":"3_5",
          "votes":"1",
          "result":"5"
        },
        "rezept_statistik":{
          "total":{
            "viewed":"4095",
            "saved":"12",
            "printed":"71",
            "mailed":"1"
          },
          "month":{
            "viewed":"16",
            "saved":"0",
            "printed":"1",
            "mailed":"0"
          }
        },
        "rezept_frontend_url":"http:\/\/www.chefkoch.de\/rezepte\/1010771206206427\/Apple-Pie.html"
    }
  ]
}

Now our module has quite some functionality. Hope this was usefull for at least a few people.

How to get recipes from chefkoch.de using ruby | Part 1

Comments

Driven by a seminar task at university we were free to create any kind of web/android/iphone app which takes care of
some contextual issues.

As I am a huge fan of Ruby and Ruby on Rails I convinced my partner to develop a web app for this seminar.

Since we both like to cook, we decided to create a web app with RoR which helps you to find a suitable recipe for
the ingedrients which are already present at your home.

To get us started finding some database we can work on, I stumbled across the ChefkochApi.
It’s fairly easy to interact with, you just search for lets say “apple pie” by firing this request:

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http://api.chefkoch.de/api/1.1/api-recipe-search.php?Suchbegriff=apple%20pie&i=0&z=1&m=0&o=0&t=&limit=2

… and will get a response like this one:

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{"spellcheck":"","api":{"version":1.1},"total":48,
  "result":[
    {
      "RezeptID":52749,
      "RezeptShowID":"527491149183211",
      "RezeptName":"Apple Pie",
      "RezeptName2":"Apfel \u0096Pie",
      "Minuten":30,
      "Bild":true,
      "Datum":"2006-06-01T19:36:12Z",
      "SchwierigkeitsgradName":"simpel",
      "user_id":"8617bcc7ecc7909ad61f52a52337f763",
      "uservote_img":"3_5",
      "RezeptBild":
      "http:\/\/cdn.chefkoch.de\/ck.de\/rezepte\/52\/52749\/36051-thumbfix-apple-pie.jpg"},

    {
      "RezeptID":101077,
      "RezeptShowID":"1010771206206427",
      "RezeptName":"Apple Pie",
      "RezeptName2":"Mehl, Butter, Zucker, Zitronenschale (oder wahlweise eine Packung Citroback), Salz und die Eigelbe mischen und zu einem Teig ...",
      "Minuten":45,
      "Bild":false,
      "Datum":"2008-03-27T18:58:17Z",
      "SchwierigkeitsgradName":"simpel",
      "user_id":"3733fd403a13fb5f951c2369ae1acd22",
      "uservote_img":"3_5"}
  ]}

And this is how you can access the API with Ruby:

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require 'net/http'
require 'json'
require 'uri'

module ChefkochApi
  @api_url = "http://api.chefkoch.de/api/1.0/api-recipe-search.php"

  def self.search(search_text)
    params = {}
    params["Suchbegriff"] = search_text.strip
    # params["limit"] = 20 # you can pass the limit amount of results you like to receive

    url = URI.parse @api_url
    url.query = URI.encode_www_form(params)

    response = Net::HTTP.get_response(url)
    response.body
    end
  end

Now you can invoke a recipe search by simply calling

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ChefkochApi.search("apple pie")

That’s it for part one. In the next part I will try to modify the result and retrieve more detailed information from it like
ingredients and stuff.