lwp::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 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 make
requests too frequently.

But, before you consider writing a robot take a look at
<URL:http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/pro
jects/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 RetryAfter 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.

COPYRIGHT

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

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