RobotUA.pm Perldoc

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
METHODS
SEE ALSO
COPYRIGHT

NAME

LWP::RobotUA - A class for Web Robots

SYNOPSIS

require LWP::RobotUA; $ua = new LWP::RobotUA 'my-robot/0.1', 'me@foo.com'; $ua->delay(10); # be very nice, go slowly ... # just use it just like a normal LWP::UserAgent $res = $ua->request($req);

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 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://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/robots.html>.

When you use a LWP::RobotUA as your user agent, then you do not really have to think about these things yourself. Just send requests as you do when you are using a normal LWP::UserAgent 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:

$ua = LWP::RobotUA->new($agent_name, $from, [$rules]): Your robot's name and the mail address of the human responsible for the robot (i.e. you) are required by the constructor.
Optionally it allows you to specify the WWW::RobotRules object to use.
$ua->delay([$minutes]): Set the minimum delay between requests to the same server. The default is 1 minute.
$ua->use_sleep([$boolean]): Get/set a value indicating whether the UA should sleep() if requests arrive too fast (before $ua->delay minutes has passed). 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.
$ua->rules([$rules]): Set/get which WWW::RobotRules object to use.
$ua->no_visits($netloc): Returns the number of documents fetched from this server host. Yes 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.