This script removes the sidebar and navigation information from the HTML files of the Puppet Labs documentation in the "puppetdocs-latest" folder.It uses Nokogiri to select all of the content in div with a "primary-content" class, strips out the last "Back to top" text at the bottom, and then writes the data to a separate folder.

extract-content.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'nokogiri'

# This script will grab the main content out of the Puppet Labs documentation,
# and write the cleaned HTML files to a new directory.
#
# To use, first download http://docs.puppetlabs.com/puppetdocs-latest.tar.gz
# Create a TEMP folder at the top-level of a directory
# Unzip the puppetdocs-latest at the top-level, and then make a copy into the TEMP directory.
# 
# puppetdocs-latest    # Copied directory and files so that the ruby script can overwrite the files
# TEMP
#    |--- puppetdocs-latest   # Directory with original data
#    |--- extract-content.rb
#    |--- html-input-files.txt   # A pruned list of HTML files 

# To create the html-input-files.txt, then run this command: 
# $find puppetdocs-latest -type f -name "*.html" > html-input-files.txt
filename = 'html-input-files.txt'

File.open(filename, 'r').each_line do |line|
  puts line[0..-2]
  # Open up the file that is passed in through the input of the script
  f = File.open(line[0..-2])
  
  doc = Nokogiri::XML(f)

  # Select all of the div content that has a class of primary-content
  primarycontent = doc.css('.primary-content')

  # Remove "Back to Top" link at the bottom of the page.
  links = primarycontent.xpath('//blockquote/p/a')
  if !primarycontent.empty? then 
      if links[links.length-1].inner_html == "↑ Back to top"
          links[links.length-1].remove
      end
  end
  
  # Close out the original file
  f.close()

  # Create a new file with the filename entered as an argument and prepend it with ebook
  new = File.open("../" + line[0..-2], "w")
  # Write the first instance of primarycontent. The second instance is erroneous
  new.write(primarycontent[0])
  puts line[0..-2] + " FINISHED"
end