generate spreadsheet .csv of all urls on website robots.txt

FSG Records Editorial Teams

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·

15-01-2025

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I cannot directly access and process external websites' content, including their robots.txt files. Therefore, I cannot generate a .csv file of URLs from a website's robots.txt. Accessing and processing this information requires web scraping capabilities that are beyond my current functionalities.

However, I can explain how you can achieve this yourself using readily available tools:

Method 1: Manual Extraction (Small Websites)

For websites with relatively small robots.txt files, you can manually copy and paste the contents into a text editor. Then, you can identify the disallowed URLs and create a .csv file in a spreadsheet program like Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. The process is simple:

1. Find the robots.txt file: Go to the website (e.g., www.example.com/robots.txt).
2. Copy the contents: Select all the text and copy it.
3. Paste into a text editor: Paste the content into Notepad (Windows), TextEdit (Mac), or a similar plain text editor.
4. Extract URLs: Identify lines that start with Disallow: or Sitemap: (sitemaps list allowed URLs).
5. Create a .csv file: Open a spreadsheet program. Create a column labeled "URL" and manually enter each URL you extracted. Save the file as a .csv.

Method 2: Using Programming (Large Websites)

For larger websites with complex robots.txt files, manual extraction is inefficient and prone to errors. You'll need to use a programming language like Python with libraries such as requests to fetch the robots.txt and then parse the content to extract the URLs. Here's a basic Python example (you'll need to install the requests library using pip install requests):

import requests
import csv

def extract_urls_from_robots(url):
    try:
        robots_url = f"{url}/robots.txt"
        response = requests.get(robots_url)
        response.raise_for_status()  # Raise an exception for bad status codes

        urls = []
        for line in response.text.splitlines():
            if line.startswith("Disallow:"):
                url_part = line[len("Disallow:"):].strip()
                if url_part: #avoid empty lines
                    urls.append(url_part)
            elif line.startswith("Sitemap:"):
                urls.append(line[len("Sitemap:"):].strip())

        return urls
    except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
        print(f"Error fetching robots.txt: {e}")
        return []

website_url = "https://www.example.com" # Replace with the target website
extracted_urls = extract_urls_from_robots(website_url)

with open("urls.csv", "w", newline="", encoding="utf-8") as csvfile:
    writer = csv.writer(csvfile)
    writer.writerow(["URL"])  # Write header
    writer.writerows([[url] for url in extracted_urls])

print("URLs extracted to urls.csv")

Remember to replace "https://www.example.com" with the actual website URL. This script handles basic Disallow and Sitemap directives. More sophisticated robots.txt files might require more complex parsing logic.

This Python script provides a more robust and scalable approach compared to manual extraction. Remember to always respect the robots.txt rules and the website's terms of service. Unauthorized scraping can lead to legal issues.