31

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.

Simone Carletti
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Bashar Abdullah
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4 Answers4

64

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'
Simone Carletti
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7

I was looking for a way to set a random user agent for Mechanize, so I ended up doing this:

a = Mechanize.new do |agent|
  agent.user_agent_alias = (Mechanize::AGENT_ALIASES.keys - ['Mechanize']).sample
end
itayad
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  • I get this `NoMethodError Exception: undefined method user_agent_alias for #` error instead... – jmoon90 Jan 21 '15 at 15:56
  • should be a = Mechanize.new do |agent| agent.user_agent = Mechanize::AGENT_ALIASES[(Mechanize::AGENT_ALIASES.keys - ['Mechanize']).sample] end – Arkhitech May 27 '15 at 10:37
1

As replied by @Arkhitech, now you would want to do:

  agt = Mechanize.new 
  agt.agent.user_agent = Mechanize::AGENT_ALIASES[(Mechanize::AGENT_ALIASES.keys - ['Mechanize']).sample]

user_agent_alias is not available any more.

Andrew
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0

Just to get a new Agent, that is not mechanize

Mechanize::AGENT_ALIASES[(Mechanize::AGENT_ALIASES.keys - ['Mechanize']).sample]
Tim Kretschmer
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