Python Decorator for Preventing Robot Indexing

By  on  

Much of my time at Mozilla has been spent catching up to the rest of the MDN team with respect to python.  The new MDN backend, codenamed Kuma, is entirely Django-based and has been a joy to learn.  My latest python adventures have been focused on increasing MDN's SEO score, a task which includes telling Google not to index given pages.  In doing so, I created my first view decorator:  a decorator that sends a response header which prevents a robot from indexing the given page.

The Python

The first step is importing the decorator dependencies:

from functools import wraps

The next step is creating the decorator definition:

def prevent_indexing(view_func):
    """Decorator to prevent a page from being indexable by robots"""
    @wraps(view_func)
    def _added_header(request, *args, **kwargs):
        response = view_func(request, *args, **kwargs)
        response['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noindex'
        return response
    return _added_header

The original view is processed so that the response can be received;  simple add a key of X-Robots-Tag to the response, value set to noindex, and the decorator is complete!

To use the decorator, simply add it to a given view:

@login_required
@prevent_indexing
def new_document(request):
	""" Does whatever 'new_document' should do; page should not be indexed """

Voila -- the X-Robots-Tag header will be sent so that robots wont index the page!  Decorators allow for loads of additional functionality for any view, and are easily reusable;  I'm glad to add them to my arsenal!

Recent Features

  • By
    JavaScript Promise API

    While synchronous code is easier to follow and debug, async is generally better for performance and flexibility. Why "hold up the show" when you can trigger numerous requests at once and then handle them when each is ready?  Promises are becoming a big part of the JavaScript world...

  • By
    Convert XML to JSON with JavaScript

    If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I've been working on a super top secret mobile application using Appcelerator Titanium.  The experience has been great:  using JavaScript to create easy to write, easy to test, native mobile apps has been fun.  My...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Introducing MooTools LazyLoad

    Once concept I'm very fond of is lazy loading. Lazy loading defers the loading of resources (usually images) until they are needed. Why load stuff you never need if you can prevent it, right? I've created LazyLoad, a customizable MooTools plugin that...

  • By
    Modal-Style Text Selection with Fokus

    Every once in a while I find a tiny JavaScript library that does something very specific, very well.  My latest find, Fokus, is a utility that listens for text selection within the page, and when such an event occurs, shows a beautiful modal dialog in...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!