Flat Data "Git Scraping" Case Study with Ruby - 260 (CIA World) Factbook County Profile Datasets Updated Twice Per Month On GitHub For Easy Re(Use)

Hello,

  Allow me to introduce Flat Data ("Git Scraping"). What's Flat Data!?

Flat explores how to make it easy to work with data in git and GitHub.
It builds on the "git scraping" approach pioneered by Simon Willison
to offer a simple pattern for bringing working datasets into your repositories
and versioning them, because developing against local datasets is faster and
easier than working with data over the wire.

(Source: Flata Data - GitHub Office of the CTO [1])

  For a long running real-world example following the flat data "git
scraping" approach
  even before Simon Willison pioneered the approach
  allow me to highlight the /factbook.json [2a] datasets.

  The 260 country profile datasets get auto-updated twice a month (on
the 1st and 15th)
  via the /factbook [2b] ruby gems & scripts
  for easy (re)use and offline world data exploration.

  What's your take on Flat Data?
Do you know (or use) any datasets via git and GitHub (and ruby)?

Questions? Comments? Welcome here on the mailing list or on the
planet ruby channel [3].
   Happy flat data git scraping with ruby.

[1] GitHub Next | Flat Data
[2a] GitHub - factbook/factbook.json: World Factbook Country Profiles in JSON - Free Open Public Domain Data - No API Key Required ;-)
[2b] GitHub - factbook/factbook: factbook gem - scripts for the world factbook (get open structured data e.g JSON etc.)
[3] All About Programming Ruby