Google Image Search in Rails using the Google Ajax API

Google has a neat Ajax API for searching images on the web. This is neat, but I wanted to integrate it into my site and didn't want to rely on Javascript so heavily. Luckily, Google also supplies a JSON api that's very easy to work with.

Instead, I made a GoogleImage class and reference it in the controller like so. This is in a controller action. The view for this supplies a keyword via a form, and there is a simple 'next' | 'pevious' link that modifies the start parameter.

This is in the view (app/views/search/google_images.html.erb)

<% for image in @google_images %>
 <%= link_to(image_tag(image.thumbnail, :style => 'padding:3px; border:solid 1px #EEE; margin:2px; width:100px; float:left'), image.original) %>
<% end %>
<%= clear %>
<%= link_to_unless (params[:start] == 0), 'Prev', :overwrite_params => { :start => (params[:start] - 8) } %> |
<%= link_to_unless (params[:start] > 0 && @google_images.blank?), 'Next', :overwrite_params => { :start => (params[:start] + 8) } %>

This is in the controller (app/controllers/search_controller.rb)

  def google_images
    params[:start] = params[:start].to_i
    @page_title = "Import image from Google"
    @google_images = GoogleImage.all(params[:keywords], params[:start])
  end

And this is the model (app/models/google_image.rb)

class GoogleImage
  
  require 'json'
  
  attr_accessor :thumbnail, :original, :name, :position
  
  def initialize(params)
    super()
    self.name = params[:name]
    self.thumbnail = params[:thumbnail]
    self.original = params[:original]
    self.position = params[:position]
  end
  
  def self.find (keyword, position = 0)
    url = "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/images?rsz=large&start=#{position}&v=1.0&q=#{CGI.escape(keyword)}"
    json_results = open(url) {|f| f.read };
    results = JSON.parse(json_results)
    image_array = results['responseData']['results']
    image = image_array[0] if image_array
    google_image = self.new(:thumbnail => image['tbUrl'], :original => image['unescapedUrl'], :position => position, :name => keyword.titleize)
  end
  
  def self.all (keyword, position = 0)
    return [] if (keyword.nil? || keyword.strip.blank?)
    url = "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/images?rsz=large&start=#{position}&v=1.0&q=#{CGI.escape(keyword)}"
    json_results = open(url) {|f| f.read };
    results = JSON.parse(json_results)
    begin
      image_array = results['responseData']['results']
      google_images = image_array.map{|image| self.new(:thumbnail => image['tbUrl'], :original => image['unescapedUrl'], :name => keyword.titleize) }
      google_images.each_index{|i| google_images[i].position = position + i }
    rescue
      []
    end
  end
  
end

A couple things to note
- the "start" parameter is not a page number. It's the index of the image in this search.
- Google seems to allow the first 64 images to come back. No more.
- Display is limited to 4 or 8 results (that's due to the result size param 'rsz').