Motivation:
I use YQL a lot and I find myself writing query = “select * from …”, passing the query to the YQL webservice, and then JSON-parsing the response, repeat … I searched (briefly) for a Ruby gem for YQL, but couldn’t find one, so I made (a very basic) function to perform the actions listed above.

Usage:
Drop the code below in a file and run it

Code:

require 'net/http'
require 'rubygems'
require 'json'

def yql(query)
  uri = "http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql"

  # everything's requested via POST, which is all I needed when I wrote this
  # likewise, everything coming back is json encoded
  response = Net::HTTP.post_form( URI.parse( uri ), {
    'q' => query,
    'format' => 'json'
  } )

  json = JSON.parse( response.body )
  return json
end