RobotUA(3)

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 applica-
       tions.  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://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 SER-
           VICE_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.

SEE ALSO

       LWP::UserAgent, WWW::RobotRules

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 1996-2000 Gisle Aas.

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
       under the same terms as Perl itself.

libwww-perl-5.65                  2001-04-27                   LWP::RobotUA(3)