How to set custom user-agent for Mechanize in Rails

ruby-on-rails ruby ruby-on-rails-3 mechanize
Bashar Abdullah picture Bashar Abdullah · Feb 15, 2011 · Viewed 17.2k times · Source

I know you have a set of pre-defined aliases you can use by setting agent.user_agent_alias = 'Linux Mozilla' for instance, but what if I want to set my own user agent, as I'm writing a web crawler and want to identify it, for the sites I'm indexing's sake. Just like Googlebot.

There seems to be a user_agent method, but I can't seem to find any documentation about it's function.

Answer

Simone Carletti picture Simone Carletti · Feb 15, 2011

You can set the user agent from an alias

a = Mechanize.new
a.user_agent_alias = 'Mac Safari'

Available aliases are stored in the AGENT_ALIASES constant.

p Mechanize::AGENT_ALIASES

Otherwise, use #user_agent to set your custom user agent.

a = Mechanize.new
a.user_agent = 'Custom agent'

Related questions

How to get a random number in Ruby

How do I generate a random number between 0 and n?

Read More
How to remove a key from Hash and get the remaining hash in Ruby/Rails?

To add a new pair to Hash I do: {:a => 1, :b => 2}.merge!({:c => 3}) #=> {:a => 1, :b => 2, :c => 3} Is there a similar way to delete a key from Hash ? This works: {:a => 1, :b => 2}.…

Read More
How to run a single RSpec test?

I have the following file: /spec/controllers/groups_controller_spec.rb What command in terminal do I use to run just that spec and in what directory do I run the command? My gem file: # Test ENVIRONMENT GEMS group :development, :…

Read More