2 :mod:`robotparser` --- Parser for robots.txt
3 =============================================
5 .. module:: robotparser
6 :synopsis: Loads a robots.txt file and answers questions about fetchability of other URLs.
7 .. sectionauthor:: Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com>
12 single: World Wide Web
16 This module provides a single class, :class:`RobotFileParser`, which answers
17 questions about whether or not a particular user agent can fetch a URL on the
18 Web site that published the :file:`robots.txt` file. For more details on the
19 structure of :file:`robots.txt` files, see http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html.
22 .. class:: RobotFileParser()
24 This class provides a set of methods to read, parse and answer questions about a
25 single :file:`robots.txt` file.
28 .. method:: RobotFileParser.set_url(url)
30 Sets the URL referring to a :file:`robots.txt` file.
33 .. method:: RobotFileParser.read()
35 Reads the :file:`robots.txt` URL and feeds it to the parser.
38 .. method:: RobotFileParser.parse(lines)
40 Parses the lines argument.
43 .. method:: RobotFileParser.can_fetch(useragent, url)
45 Returns ``True`` if the *useragent* is allowed to fetch the *url* according to
46 the rules contained in the parsed :file:`robots.txt` file.
49 .. method:: RobotFileParser.mtime()
51 Returns the time the ``robots.txt`` file was last fetched. This is useful for
52 long-running web spiders that need to check for new ``robots.txt`` files
56 .. method:: RobotFileParser.modified()
58 Sets the time the ``robots.txt`` file was last fetched to the current time.
60 The following example demonstrates basic use of the RobotFileParser class. ::
62 >>> import robotparser
63 >>> rp = robotparser.RobotFileParser()
64 >>> rp.set_url("http://www.musi-cal.com/robots.txt")
66 >>> rp.can_fetch("*", "http://www.musi-cal.com/cgi-bin/search?city=San+Francisco")
68 >>> rp.can_fetch("*", "http://www.musi-cal.com/")