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ropensci/robotstxt: R 📦 for parsing and checking robots.txt files 🤖

A ‘robots.txt’ Parser and ‘Webbot’/‘Spider’/‘Crawler’ Permissions Checker. Provides functions to download and parse ‘robots.txt’ files. Ultimately the package makes it easy to check if bots (spiders, crawler, scrapers, …) are allowed to access specific resources on a domain.

Install from CRAN using

install.packages("robotstxt")

Or install the development version:

devtools::install_github("ropensci/robotstxt")

MIT + file LICENSE
c( person( “Pedro”, “Baltazar”, role = c(“ctb”), email = “pedrobtz@gmail.com” ), person( “Jordan”, “Bradford”, role = c(“cre”), email = “jrdnbradford@gmail.com” ), person( “Peter”, “Meissner”, role = c(“aut”), email = “retep.meissner@gmail.com” ), person( “Kun”, “Ren”, email = “mail@renkun.me”, role = c(“aut”, “cph”), comment = “Author and copyright holder of list_merge.R.” ), person(“Oliver”, “Keys”, role = “ctb”, comment = “original release code review”), person(“Rich”, “Fitz John”, role = “ctb”, comment = “original release code review”) )

To cite package 'robotstxt' in publications use:

  Meissner P, Ren K (2024). _robotstxt: A 'robots.txt' Parser and
  'Webbot'/'Spider'/'Crawler' Permissions Checker_. R package version 0.7.15,
  https://github.com/ropensci/robotstxt, <https://docs.ropensci.org/robotstxt/>.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Manual{,
    title = {robotstxt: A 'robots.txt' Parser and 'Webbot'/'Spider'/'Crawler' Permissions Checker},
    author = {Peter Meissner and Kun Ren},
    year = {2024},
    note = {R package version 0.7.15, https://github.com/ropensci/robotstxt},
    url = {https://docs.ropensci.org/robotstxt/},
  }

Review the package index reference or use

for documentation.

Simple path access right checking (the functional way) …

options(robotstxt_warn = FALSE)

paths_allowed(
  paths  = c("/api/rest_v1/?doc", "/w/"),
  domain = "wikipedia.org",
  bot    = "*"
)
##  wikipedia.org
## [1]  TRUE FALSE

paths_allowed(
  paths = c(
    "https://wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/?doc",
    "https://wikipedia.org/w/"
  )
)
##  wikipedia.org                       wikipedia.org
## [1]  TRUE FALSE

… or (the object oriented way) …

options(robotstxt_warn = FALSE)

rtxt <- robotstxt(domain = "wikipedia.org")

rtxt$check(
  paths = c("/api/rest_v1/?doc", "/w/"),
  bot   = "*"
)
## [1]  TRUE FALSE

Retrieving the robots.txt file for a domain:

# retrieval
rt <- get_robotstxt("https://petermeissner.de")

# printing
rt
## [robots.txt]
## --------------------------------------
## 
## # just do it - punk

Checking whether or not one is supposadly allowed to access some resource from a web server is - unfortunately - not just a matter of downloading and parsing a simple robots.txt file.

First there is no official specification for robots.txt files so every robots.txt file written and every robots.txt file read and used is an interpretation. Most of the time we all have a common understanding on how things are supposed to work but things get more complicated at the edges.

Some interpretation problems:

• finding no robots.txt file at the server (e.g. HTTP status code 404) implies that everything is allowed
• subdomains should have there own robots.txt file if not it is assumed that everything is allowed
• redirects involving protocol changes - e.g. upgrading from http to https - are followed and considered no domain or subdomain change - so whatever is found at the end of the redirect is considered to be the robots.txt file for the original domain
• redirects from subdomain www to the domain is considered no domain change - so whatever is found at the end of the redirect is considered to be the robots.txt file for the subdomain originally requested

Because the interpretation of robots.txt rules not just depends on the rules specified within the file, the package implements an event handler system that allows to interpret and re-interpret events into rules.

Under the hood the rt_request_handler() function is called within get_robotstxt(). This function takes an {httr} request-response object and a set of event handlers. Processing the request and the handlers it checks for various events and states around getting the file and reading in its content. If an event/state happened the event handlers are passed on to the request_handler_handler() along for problem resolution and collecting robots.txt file transformations:

• rule priorities decide if rules are applied given the current state priority
• if rules specify signals those are emitted (e.g. error, message, warning)
• often rules imply overwriting the raw content with a suitable interpretation given the circumstances the file was (or was not) retrieved

Event handler rules can either consist of 4 items or can be functions - the former being the usual case and that used throughout the package itself. Functions like paths_allowed() do have parameters that allow passing along handler rules or handler functions.

Handler rules are lists with the following items:

• over_write_file_with: if the rule is triggered and has higher priority than those rules applied beforehand (i.e. the new priority has an higher value than the old priority) then the robots.txt file retrieved will be overwritten by this character vector
• signal: might be "message", "warning", or "error" and will use the signal function to signal the event/state just handled. Signaling a warning or a message might be suppressed by setting the function paramter warn = FALSE.
• cache should the package be allowed to cache the results of the retrieval or not
• priority the priority of the rule specified as numeric value, rules with higher priority will be allowed to overwrite robots.txt file content changed by rules with lower priority

The package knows the following rules with the following defaults:

• on_server_error :

  • given a server error - the server is unable to serve a file - we assume that something is terrible wrong and forbid all paths for the time being but do not cache the result so that we might get an updated file later on

    on_server_error_default
    ## $over_write_file_with
    ## [1] "User-agent: *\nDisallow: /"
    ## 
    ## $signal
    ## [1] "error"
    ## 
    ## $cache
    ## [1] FALSE
    ## 
    ## $priority
    ## [1] 20

• on_client_error :

  • client errors encompass all HTTP status 4xx status codes except 404 which is handled directly

  • despite the fact that there are a lot of codes that might indicate that the client has to take action (authentication, billing, … see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP-Statuscode) in the case of retrieving robots.txt with simple GET request things should just work and any client error is treated as if there is no file available and thus scraping is generally allowed

    on_client_error_default
    ## $over_write_file_with
    ## [1] "User-agent: *\nAllow: /"
    ## 
    ## $signal
    ## [1] "warning"
    ## 
    ## $cache
    ## [1] TRUE
    ## 
    ## $priority
    ## [1] 19

• on_not_found :

  • HTTP status code 404 has its own handler but is treated the same ways other client errors: if there is no file available and thus scraping is generally allowed

    on_not_found_default
    ## $over_write_file_with
    ## [1] "User-agent: *\nAllow: /"
    ## 
    ## $signal
    ## [1] "warning"
    ## 
    ## $cache
    ## [1] TRUE
    ## 
    ## $priority
    ## [1] 1

• on_redirect :

  • redirects are ok - often redirects redirect from HTTP schema to HTTPS - {robotstxt} will use whatever content it has been redirected to

    on_redirect_default
    ## $cache
    ## [1] TRUE
    ## 
    ## $priority
    ## [1] 3

• on_domain_change :

  • domain changes are handled as if the robots.txt file did not exist and thus scraping is generally allowed

    on_domain_change_default
    ## $signal
    ## [1] "warning"
    ## 
    ## $cache
    ## [1] TRUE
    ## 
    ## $priority
    ## [1] 4

• on_file_type_mismatch :

  • if {robotstxt} gets content with content type other than text it probably is not a robotstxt file, this situation is handled as if no file was provided and thus scraping is generally allowed

    on_file_type_mismatch_default
    ## $over_write_file_with
    ## [1] "User-agent: *\nAllow: /"
    ## 
    ## $signal
    ## [1] "warning"
    ## 
    ## $cache
    ## [1] TRUE
    ## 
    ## $priority
    ## [1] 6

• on_suspect_content :

  • if {robotstxt} cannot parse it probably is not a robotstxt file, this situation is handled as if no file was provided and thus scraping is generally allowed

    on_suspect_content_default
    ## $over_write_file_with
    ## [1] "User-agent: *\nAllow: /"
    ## 
    ## $signal
    ## [1] "warning"
    ## 
    ## $cache
    ## [1] TRUE
    ## 
    ## $priority
    ## [1] 7

from version 0.7.x onwards

While previous releases were concerned with implementing parsing and permission checking and improving performance the 0.7.x release will be about robots.txt retrieval foremost. While retrieval was implemented there are corner cases in the retrieval stage that very well influence the interpretation of permissions granted.

Features and Problems handled:

• now handles corner cases of retrieving robots.txt files
• e.g. if no robots.txt file is available this basically means “you can scrape it all”
• but there are further corner cases (what if there is a server error, what if redirection takes place, what if redirection takes place to different domains, what if a file is returned but it is not parsable, or is of format HTML or JSON, …)

Design Decisions

1. the whole HTTP request-response-chain is checked for certain event/state types
   • server error
   • client error
   • file not found (404)
   • redirection
   • redirection to another domain
2. the content returned by the HTTP is checked against
   • mime type / file type specification mismatch
   • suspicious content (file content does seem to be JSON, HTML, or XML instead of robots.txt)
3. state/event handler define how these states and events are handled
4. a handler handler executes the rules defined in individual handlers
5. handler can be overwritten
6. handler defaults are defined that they should always do the right thing
7. handler can …
   • overwrite the content of a robots.txt file (e.g. allow/disallow all)
   • modify how problems should be signaled: error, warning, message, none
   • if robots.txt file retrieval should be cached or not
8. problems (no matter how they were handled) are attached to the robots.txt’s as attributes, allowing for …
   • transparency
   • reacting post-mortem to the problems that occured
9. all handler (even the actual execution of the HTTP-request) can be overwritten at runtime to inject user defined behaviour beforehand

By default all functions retrieving robots.txt files will warn if there are

• any HTTP events happening while retrieving the file (e.g. redirects) or
• the content of the file does not seem to be a valid robots.txt file.

Warnings can be turned off in several ways:

suppressWarnings({
  paths_allowed("PATH_WITH_WARNING")
})

paths_allowed("PATH_WITH_WARNING", warn = FALSE)

options(robotstxt_warn = FALSE)
paths_allowed("PATH_WITH_WARNING")

The robots.txt files retrieved are basically mere character vectors:

rt <- get_robotstxt("petermeissner.de")

as.character(rt)
## [1] "# just do it - punk\n"

cat(rt)
## # just do it - punk

The last HTTP request is stored in an object

rt_last_http$request
## Response [https://petermeissner.de/robots.txt]
##   Date: 2024-09-02 01:32
##   Status: 200
##   Content-Type: text/plain
##   Size: 20 B
## # just do it - punk

But they also have some additional information stored as attributes.

names(attributes(rt))
## [1] "problems" "cached"   "request"  "class"

Events that might change the interpretation of the rules found in the robots.txt file:

attr(rt, "problems")
## $on_redirect
## $on_redirect[[1]]
## $on_redirect[[1]]$status
## [1] 301
## 
## $on_redirect[[1]]$location
## [1] "https://petermeissner.de/robots.txt"
## 
## 
## $on_redirect[[2]]
## $on_redirect[[2]]$status
## [1] 200
## 
## $on_redirect[[2]]$location
## NULL

The {httr} request-response object that allwos to dig into what exactly was going on in the client-server exchange.

attr(rt, "request")
## Response [https://petermeissner.de/robots.txt]
##   Date: 2024-09-02 01:32
##   Status: 200
##   Content-Type: text/plain
##   Size: 20 B
## # just do it - punk

… or lets us retrieve the original content given back by the server:

httr::content(
  x        = attr(rt, "request"),
  as       = "text",
  encoding = "UTF-8"
)
## [1] "# just do it - punk\n"

… or have a look at the actual HTTP request issued and all response headers given back by the server:

# extract request-response object
rt_req <- attr(rt, "request")

# HTTP request
rt_req$request
## <request>
## GET http://petermeissner.de/robots.txt
## Output: write_memory
## Options:
## * useragent: libcurl/7.81.0 r-curl/5.2.2 httr/1.4.7
## * ssl_verifypeer: 1
## * httpget: TRUE
## Headers:
## * Accept: application/json, text/xml, application/xml, */*
## * user-agent: R version 4.4.1 (2024-06-14)

# response headers
rt_req$all_headers
## [[1]]
## [[1]]$status
## [1] 301
## 
## [[1]]$version
## [1] "HTTP/1.1"
## 
## [[1]]$headers
## $server
## [1] "nginx/1.10.3 (Ubuntu)"
## 
## $date
## [1] "Mon, 02 Sep 2024 01:32:23 GMT"
## 
## $`content-type`
## [1] "text/html"
## 
## $`content-length`
## [1] "194"
## 
## $connection
## [1] "keep-alive"
## 
## $location
## [1] "https://petermeissner.de/robots.txt"
## 
## attr(,"class")
## [1] "insensitive" "list"       
## 
## 
## [[2]]
## [[2]]$status
## [1] 200
## 
## [[2]]$version
## [1] "HTTP/1.1"
## 
## [[2]]$headers
## $server
## [1] "nginx/1.10.3 (Ubuntu)"
## 
## $date
## [1] "Mon, 02 Sep 2024 01:32:24 GMT"
## 
## $`content-type`
## [1] "text/plain"
## 
## $`content-length`
## [1] "20"
## 
## $`last-modified`
## [1] "Wed, 07 Dec 2022 13:34:14 GMT"
## 
## $connection
## [1] "keep-alive"
## 
## $etag
## [1] "\"63909656-14\""
## 
## $`accept-ranges`
## [1] "bytes"
## 
## attr(,"class")
## [1] "insensitive" "list"

For convenience the package also includes a as.list() method for robots.txt files.

as.list(rt)
## $content
## [1] "# just do it - punk\n"
## 
## $robotstxt
## [1] "# just do it - punk\n"
## 
## $problems
## $problems$on_redirect
## $problems$on_redirect[[1]]
## $problems$on_redirect[[1]]$status
## [1] 301
## 
## $problems$on_redirect[[1]]$location
## [1] "https://petermeissner.de/robots.txt"
## 
## 
## $problems$on_redirect[[2]]
## $problems$on_redirect[[2]]$status
## [1] 200
## 
## $problems$on_redirect[[2]]$location
## NULL
## 
## 
## 
## 
## $request
## Response [https://petermeissner.de/robots.txt]
##   Date: 2024-09-02 01:32
##   Status: 200
##   Content-Type: text/plain
##   Size: 20 B
## # just do it - punk

The retrieval of robots.txt files is cached on a per R-session basis. Restarting an R-session will invalidate the cache. Also using the the function parameter force = TRUE will force the package to re-retrieve the robots.txt file.

paths_allowed("petermeissner.de/I_want_to_scrape_this_now", force = TRUE, verbose = TRUE)
##  petermeissner.de                      rt_robotstxt_http_getter: force http get
## [1] TRUE
paths_allowed("petermeissner.de/I_want_to_scrape_this_now", verbose = TRUE)
##  petermeissner.de                      rt_robotstxt_http_getter: cached http get
## [1] TRUE

• https://www.robotstxt.org/norobots-rfc.txt
• Have a look at the vignette at https://cran.r-project.org/package=robotstxt/vignettes/using_robotstxt.html
• Google on robots.txt
• https://wiki.selfhtml.org/wiki/Grundlagen/Robots.txt
• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608?hl=en
• https://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html

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