1 

     2 :mod:`robotparser` ---  Parser for robots.txt

     3 =============================================

     4 

     5 .. module:: robotparser

     6    :synopsis: Loads a robots.txt file and answers questions about

     7               fetchability of other URLs.

     8 .. sectionauthor:: Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com>

     9 

    10 

    11 .. index::

    12    single: WWW

    13    single: World Wide Web

    14    single: URL

    15    single: robots.txt

    16    

    17 .. note::

    18    The :mod:`robotparser` module has been renamed :mod:`urllib.robotparser` in

    19    Python 3.0.

    20    The :term:`2to3` tool will automatically adapt imports when converting

    21    your sources to 3.0.

    22 

    23 This module provides a single class, :class:`RobotFileParser`, which answers

    24 questions about whether or not a particular user agent can fetch a URL on the

    25 Web site that published the :file:`robots.txt` file.  For more details on the

    26 structure of :file:`robots.txt` files, see http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html.

    27 

    28 

    29 .. class:: RobotFileParser()

    30 

    31    This class provides a set of methods to read, parse and answer questions

    32    about a single :file:`robots.txt` file.

    33 

    34 

    35    .. method:: set_url(url)

    36 

    37       Sets the URL referring to a :file:`robots.txt` file.

    38 

    39 

    40    .. method:: read()

    41 

    42       Reads the :file:`robots.txt` URL and feeds it to the parser.

    43 

    44 

    45    .. method:: parse(lines)

    46 

    47       Parses the lines argument.

    48 

    49 

    50    .. method:: can_fetch(useragent, url)

    51 

    52       Returns ``True`` if the *useragent* is allowed to fetch the *url*

    53       according to the rules contained in the parsed :file:`robots.txt`

    54       file.

    55 

    56 

    57    .. method:: mtime()

    58 

    59       Returns the time the ``robots.txt`` file was last fetched.  This is

    60       useful for long-running web spiders that need to check for new

    61       ``robots.txt`` files periodically.

    62 

    63 

    64    .. method:: modified()

    65 

    66       Sets the time the ``robots.txt`` file was last fetched to the current

    67       time.

    68 

    69 The following example demonstrates basic use of the RobotFileParser class. ::

    70 

    71    >>> import robotparser

    72    >>> rp = robotparser.RobotFileParser()

    73    >>> rp.set_url("http://www.musi-cal.com/robots.txt")

    74    >>> rp.read()

    75    >>> rp.can_fetch("*", "http://www.musi-cal.com/cgi-bin/search?city=San+Francisco")

    76    False

    77    >>> rp.can_fetch("*", "http://www.musi-cal.com/")

    78    True

    79