``robotparser`` --- Parser for robots.txt ****************************************** Note: The ``robotparser`` module has been renamed ``urllib.robotparser`` in Python 3.0. The *2to3* tool will automatically adapt imports when converting your sources to 3.0. This module provides a single class, ``RobotFileParser``, which answers questions about whether or not a particular user agent can fetch a URL on the Web site that published the ``robots.txt`` file. For more details on the structure of ``robots.txt`` files, see http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html. class class robotparser.RobotFileParser This class provides a set of methods to read, parse and answer questions about a single ``robots.txt`` file. set_url(url) Sets the URL referring to a ``robots.txt`` file. read() Reads the ``robots.txt`` URL and feeds it to the parser. parse(lines) Parses the lines argument. can_fetch(useragent, url) Returns ``True`` if the *useragent* is allowed to fetch the *url* according to the rules contained in the parsed ``robots.txt`` file. 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. 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