name : robotparser.rst.txt :mod:`robotparser` --- Parser for robots.txt ============================================= .. module:: robotparser :synopsis: Loads a robots.txt file and answers questions about fetchability of other URLs. .. sectionauthor:: Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com> .. index:: single: WWW single: World Wide Web single: URL single: robots.txt .. note:: The :mod:`robotparser` module has been renamed :mod:`urllib.robotparser` in Python 3. The :term:`2to3` tool will automatically adapt imports when converting your sources to Python 3. This module provides a single class, :class:`RobotFileParser`, which answers questions about whether or not a particular user agent can fetch a URL on the Web site that published the :file:`robots.txt` file. For more details on the structure of :file:`robots.txt` files, see http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html. .. class:: RobotFileParser(url='') This class provides methods to read, parse and answer questions about the :file:`robots.txt` file at *url*. .. method:: set_url(url) Sets the URL referring to a :file:`robots.txt` file. .. method:: read() Reads the :file:`robots.txt` URL and feeds it to the parser. .. method:: parse(lines) Parses the lines argument. .. method:: can_fetch(useragent, url) Returns ``True`` if the *useragent* is allowed to fetch the *url* according to the rules contained in the parsed :file:`robots.txt` file. .. method:: mtime() Returns the time the ``robots.txt`` file was last fetched. This is useful for long-running web spiders that need to check for new ``robots.txt`` files periodically. .. method:: modified() Sets the time the ``robots.txt`` file was last fetched to the current time. The following example demonstrates basic use of the RobotFileParser class. :: >>> import robotparser >>> rp = robotparser.RobotFileParser() >>> rp.set_url("http://www.musi-cal.com/robots.txt") >>> rp.read() >>> rp.can_fetch("*", "http://www.musi-cal.com/cgi-bin/search?city=San+Francisco") False >>> rp.can_fetch("*", "http://www.musi-cal.com/") True