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 /robots.txt file to ensure that they are welcomed and they should not send too frequent requests.

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.

SEE ALSO

LWP::UserAgent

METHODS

The LWP::RobotUA is a sub-class of LWP::UserAgent and implements the same methods. The use_alarm() method also desides whether we will wait if a request is tried too early (if true), or will return an error response (if false).

In addition these methods are provided:

$ua = LWP::RobotUA->new($agent_name, $from)

A name and the mail address of the human running the the robot is required by the constructor. The name can be changed later though the agent() method. The mail address chan be changed with the from() method.

$ua->delay([$minutes])

Set the minimum delay between requests to the same server. The default is 1 minute.

$ua->host_count($hostname)

Returns the number of documents fetched from this server host.

$ua->host_wait($hostname)

Returns the number of seconds you must wait before you can make a new request to this host.

$ua->as_string

Returns a text that describe the state of the UA. Mainly useful for debugging.

AUTHOR

Gisle Aas <aas@sn.no>