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LWP::RobotUA(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation LWP::RobotUA(3) NAME
LWP::RobotUA - a class for well-behaved Web robots SYNOPSIS
use LWP::RobotUA; my $ua = LWP::RobotUA->new('my-robot/0.1', 'me@foo.com'); $ua->delay(10); # be very nice -- max one hit every ten minutes! ... # Then just use it just like a normal LWP::UserAgent: my $response = $ua->get('http://whatever.int/...'); ... DESCRIPTION
This class implements a user agent that is suitable for robot applications. Robots should be nice to the servers they visit. They should consult the /robots.txt file to ensure that they are welcomed and they should not make requests too frequently. But before you consider writing a robot, take a look at <URL:http://www.robotstxt.org/>. When you use a LWP::RobotUA object as your user agent, then you do not really have to think about these things yourself; "robots.txt" files are automatically consulted and obeyed, the server isn't queried too rapidly, and so on. Just send requests as you do when you are using a normal LWP::UserAgent object (using "$ua->get(...)", "$ua->head(...)", "$ua->request(...)", etc.), and this special agent will make sure you are nice. METHODS
The LWP::RobotUA is a sub-class of LWP::UserAgent and implements the same methods. In addition the following methods are provided: $ua = LWP::RobotUA->new( %options ) $ua = LWP::RobotUA->new( $agent, $from ) $ua = LWP::RobotUA->new( $agent, $from, $rules ) The LWP::UserAgent options "agent" and "from" are mandatory. The options "delay", "use_sleep" and "rules" initialize attributes private to the RobotUA. If "rules" are not provided, then "WWW::RobotRules" is instantiated providing an internal database of robots.txt. It is also possible to just pass the value of "agent", "from" and optionally "rules" as plain positional arguments. $ua->delay $ua->delay( $minutes ) Get/set the minimum delay between requests to the same server, in minutes. The default is 1 minute. Note that this number doesn't have to be an integer; for example, this sets the delay to 10 seconds: $ua->delay(10/60); $ua->use_sleep $ua->use_sleep( $boolean ) Get/set a value indicating whether the UA should sleep() if requests arrive too fast, defined as $ua->delay minutes not passed since last request to the given server. The default is TRUE. If this value is FALSE then an internal SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE response will be generated. It will have an Retry-After header that indicates when it is OK to send another request to this server. $ua->rules $ua->rules( $rules ) Set/get which WWW::RobotRules object to use. $ua->no_visits( $netloc ) Returns the number of documents fetched from this server host. Yeah I know, this method should probably have been named num_visits() or something like that. :-( $ua->host_wait( $netloc ) Returns the number of seconds (from now) you must wait before you can make a new request to this host. $ua->as_string Returns a string that describes the state of the UA. Mainly useful for debugging. SEE ALSO
LWP::UserAgent, WWW::RobotRules COPYRIGHT
Copyright 1996-2004 Gisle Aas. This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. perl v5.18.2 2012-02-11 LWP::RobotUA(3)
