Suggestions for language/framework for an app that hooks into a site without an existing api

I have a website that I'd like to build, which would enhance the functionality for an already existing w开发者_开发技巧ebsite. Right now the site doesn't have an API (apparently it's in the works), so as I understand it I'd have to scrape the pages for the content I need.

I've worked with PHP and Coldfusion, and have access to PHP and Ruby through my existing host. I'm wondering what languages or frameworks would be best for this type of work? Is there anything that's designed to make it easy to grab specific content from a site, then pass it back?

There are a couple sites that provide scraping as a service:

http://open.dapper.net/