WWW::RobotRules(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation WWW::RobotRules(3)

# [NAME](#NAME)

WWW::RobotRules - database of robots.txt-derived permissions

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

```
 use WWW::RobotRules;
 my $rules = WWW::RobotRules->new('MOMspider/1.0');
 use LWP::Simple qw(get);
 {
   my $url = "http://some.place/robots.txt";
   my $robots_txt = get $url;
   $rules->parse($url, $robots_txt) if defined $robots_txt;
 }
 {
   my $url = "http://some.other.place/robots.txt";
   my $robots_txt = get $url;
   $rules->parse($url, $robots_txt) if defined $robots_txt;
 }
 # Now we can check if a URL is valid for those servers
 # whose "robots.txt" files we've gotten and parsed:
 if($rules->allowed($url)) {
     $c = get $url;
     ...
 }
```

# [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION)

This module parses */robots.txt* files as specified in "A Standard for Robot Exclusion", at <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html> Webmasters can use the */robots.txt* file to forbid conforming robots from accessing parts of their web site.

The parsed files are kept in a WWW::RobotRules object, and this object provides methods to check if access to a given URL is prohibited. The same WWW::RobotRules object can be used for one or more parsed */robots.txt* files on any number of hosts.

The following methods are provided:

$rules = WWW::RobotRules->new($robot\_name)

This is the constructor for WWW::RobotRules objects. The first argument given to **new()** is the name of the robot.

$rules->parse($robot\_txt\_url, $content, $fresh\_until)

The **parse()** method takes as arguments the URL that was used to retrieve the */robots.txt* file, and the contents of the file.

$rules->allowed($uri)

Returns TRUE if this robot is allowed to retrieve this URL.

$rules->agent(\[$name])

Get/set the agent name. NOTE: Changing the agent name will clear the robots.txt rules and expire times out of the cache.

# [ROBOTS.TXT](#ROBOTS.TXT)

The format and semantics of the "/robots.txt" file are as follows (this is an edited abstract of <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html>):

The file consists of one or more records separated by one or more blank lines. Each record contains lines of the form

```
  <field-name>: <value>
```

The field name is case insensitive. Text after the '#' character on a line is ignored during parsing. This is used for comments. The following &lt;field-names&gt; can be used:

[User-Agent](#User)

The value of this field is the name of the robot the record is describing access policy for. If more than one *User-Agent* field is present the record describes an identical access policy for more than one robot. At least one field needs to be present per record. If the value is '\*', the record describes the default access policy for any robot that has not not matched any of the other records.

The *User-Agent* fields must occur before the *Disallow* fields. If a record contains a *User-Agent* field after a *Disallow* field, that constitutes a malformed record. This parser will assume that a blank line should have been placed before that *User-Agent* field, and will break the record into two. All the fields before the *User-Agent* field will constitute a record, and the *User-Agent* field will be the first field in a new record.

[Disallow](#Disallow)

The value of this field specifies a partial URL that is not to be visited. This can be a full path, or a partial path; any URL that starts with this value will not be retrieved

Unrecognized records are ignored.

# [ROBOTS.TXT EXAMPLES](#ROBOTS.TXT_EXAMPLES)

The following example "/robots.txt" file specifies that no robots should visit any URL starting with "/cyberworld/map/" or "/tmp/":

```
  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /cyberworld/map/ # This is an infinite virtual URL space
  Disallow: /tmp/ # these will soon disappear
```

This example "/robots.txt" file specifies that no robots should visit any URL starting with "/cyberworld/map/", except the robot called "cybermapper":

```
  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /cyberworld/map/ # This is an infinite virtual URL space
  # Cybermapper knows where to go.
  User-agent: cybermapper
  Disallow:
```

This example indicates that no robots should visit this site further:

```
  # go away
  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /
```

This is an example of a malformed robots.txt file.

```
  # robots.txt for ancientcastle.example.com
  # I've locked myself away.
  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /
  # The castle is your home now, so you can go anywhere you like.
  User-agent: Belle
  Disallow: /west-wing/ # except the west wing!
  # It's good to be the Prince...
  User-agent: Beast
  Disallow:
```

This file is missing the required blank lines between records. However, the intention is clear.

# [SEE ALSO](#SEE_ALSO)

LWP::RobotUA, WWW::RobotRules::AnyDBM\_File

# [COPYRIGHT](#COPYRIGHT)

```
  Copyright 1995-2009, Gisle Aas
  Copyright 1995, Martijn Koster
```

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

2026-08-26 perl v5.44.0

---

Document: WWW::RobotRules(3pm) from perl-www-robotrules 6.02-r9 (Chainguard OS)
Source: https://github.com/gisle/www-robotrules.git