Show HN: An API for scraping recipe web pages

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 18, 2017, 9:51 PM UTC

rojobuffalo wrote: post #68

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #4

This really seems to be an exercise in 'structuring recipe data' rather than the ins-and-outs of scraping. Seems like a much-needed task; is there anything approaching a 'standard' for recipe data already? "ingredients": [ "600g pineapple, peeled, chopped" ] This seems like a prime candidate for improvement; something like the following would seem to be more useful: "ingredients": [{ "ingredient": "pineapple", "quant…

This is something I'm working on. I started with a nutrition graph with endpoints for individual foods, units of measure (with mass conversion for volumetric and common units), physical changes (cutting, blending), chemical changes (cooking, fermenting), and nutrient stats. It's designed as the backend to an NLP interface for describing your recent eating. A food selection composes those endpoints I mentioned; and a…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 18, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

mellum wrote: post #39

askvictor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things that would be so nice would be easy scaling, and unit conversion (even better if that's automatic)

For unit conversion to metric, I made a browser plugin: https://github.com/falk-hueffner/metric-cooking It can also convert from volume to mass, e.g. annotate "3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed light-brown sugar" with "[190 g]". It's a bit hacky (basically a giant regexp) but works nicely for me.

Post by nkrisc » Tue, Jul 18, 2017, 10:49 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #97

nkrisc wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree with you. Perhaps this kind of structure would be better suited to baking recipes? This sort of precision (amounts, timing, even order of ingredients) can be very important when baking.

Even there, I'm not too sure. I've found bread baking to be shockingly tolerant to variation— as long as I do 1tsp dried yeast per cup of water, and about 1.5 cups of water per loaf, it turns out beautifully. And if there's not enough yeast or it's rising slowly, whatever, just give it another hour to do its thing. Anyway, that's across white, part whole wheat, part rye, and includes all kinds of additives like bran,…

Post by setr » Wed, Jul 19, 2017, 6:39 AM UTC

canes123456 wrote: post #96

mikepurvis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to build a little recipe DB along these lines years ago. What I ended up finding is that as I improved in my own food preparation skills, my interest in super-rigid recipes of this form diminished. Basically, there's just a lot of slush and room for experimentation in cooking. Think about making a stir fry— how many people would level off exact masses of different vegetables to combine in perfect proportion?…

I agree that the much of the value of recipes is as a source of new techniques and combinations. However, I strongly prefer precise recipes vs vague recipes. A recipe should be reproducible as much as possible. I can choose to make changes or combine another recipe based on my priorities. However, vagueness in a recipe adds randomness on top of your changes. If precision for a single element does not matter or varies…

Post by pdimitar » Wed, Jul 19, 2017, 7:30 PM UTC

rojobuffalo wrote: post #105

pdimitar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your repository public and/or are you willing to share? I am not looking to make this into a business myself but as a guy who is very frustrated that he can't properly organize his diet, I really want to use something like this. Hell, if it can be improved to be usable enough and to partially replace a personal nutritionist, one might sell access to it one day.

The plan is to put out an alpha release this month. In the meantime you might check out https://www.eatthismuch.com/ . I'm not that experienced with databases; so exposing the design might be unwise from a security perspective. I'm warm to the idea of open sourcing in the future though. I've only shared repo access with a few trusted engineers. If you think you might want to contribute, hmu ryan at terra dot farm.