.. _topics-commands: ================= Command line tool ================= .. versionadded:: 0.10 Scrapy is controlled through the ``scrapy`` command-line tool, to be referred here as the "Scrapy tool" to differentiate it from their sub-commands which we just call "commands", or "Scrapy commands". The Scrapy tool provides several commands, for multiple purposes, and each one accepts a different set of arguments and options. Using the ``scrapy`` tool ========================= You can start by running the Scrapy tool with no arguments and it will print some usage help and the available commands:: Scrapy X.Y - no active project Usage: scrapy [options] [args] Available commands: crawl Start crawling a spider or URL fetch Fetch a URL using the Scrapy downloader [...] The first line will print the currently active project, if you're inside a Scrapy project. In this, it was run from outside a project. If run from inside a project it would have printed something like this:: Scrapy X.Y - project: myproject Usage: scrapy [options] [args] [...] Using the ``scrapy`` tool to create projects ============================================ The first thing you typically do with the ``scrapy`` tool is create your Scrapy project:: scrapy startproject myproject That will create a Scrapy project under the ``myproject`` directory. Next, you go inside the new project directory:: cd myproject And you're ready to use use the ``scrapy`` command to manage and control your project from there. Using the ``scrapy`` tool to control projects ============================================= You use the ``scrapy`` tool from inside your projects to control and manage them. For example, to create a new spider:: scrapy genspider mydomain mydomain.com Some Scrapy commands (like :command:`crawl`) must be run from inside a Scrapy project. See the :ref:`commands reference ` below for more information on which commands must be run from inside projects, and which not. Also keep in mind that some commands may have slightly different behaviours when running them from inside projects. For example, the fetch command will use spider-overridden behaviours (such as custom ``user_agent`` attribute) if the url being fetched is associated with some specific spider. This is intentional, as the ``fetch`` command is meant to be used to check how spiders are downloading pages. .. _topics-commands-ref: Available tool commands ======================= Here's a list of available built-in commands with a description and some usage examples. Remember you can always get more info about each command by running:: scrapy -h And you can check all available commands with:: scrapy -h .. command:: startproject startproject ------------ +-------------------+----------------------------------------+ | Syntax: | ``scrapy startproject `` | +-------------------+----------------------------------------+ | Requires project: | *no* | +-------------------+----------------------------------------+ Creates a new Scrapy project named ``project_name``, under the ``project_name`` directory. Usage example:: $ scrapy startproject myproject .. command:: genspider genspider --------- +-------------------+----------------------------------------------------+ | Syntax: | ``scrapy genspider [-t template] `` | +-------------------+----------------------------------------------------+ | Requires project: | *yes* | +-------------------+----------------------------------------------------+ Create a new spider in the current project. This is just a convenient shortcut command for creating spiders based on pre-defined templates, but certainly not the only way to create spiders. You can just create the spider source code files yourself, instead of using this command. Usage example:: $ scrapy genspider -l Available templates: basic crawl csvfeed xmlfeed $ scrapy genspider -d basic from scrapy.spider import BaseSpider class $classname(BaseSpider): name = "$name" allowed_domains = ["$domain"] start_urls = ( 'http://www.$domain/', ) def parse(self, response): pass $ scrapy genspider -t basic example example.com Created spider 'example' using template 'basic' in module: mybot.spiders.example .. command:: crawl crawl ----- +-------------------+-------------------------------+ | Syntax: | ``scrapy crawl `` | +-------------------+-------------------------------+ | Requires project: | *yes* | +-------------------+-------------------------------+ Start crawling a spider. If a URL is passed instead of a spider, it will start from that URL instead of the spider start urls. Usage examples:: $ scrapy crawl example.com [ ... example.com spider starts crawling ... ] $ scrapy crawl myspider [ ... myspider starts crawling ... ] $ scrapy crawl http://example.com/some/page.html [ ... spider that handles example.com starts crawling from that url ... ] .. command:: runserver runserver --------- +-------------------+----------------------+ | Syntax: | ``scrapy runserver`` | +-------------------+----------------------+ | Requires project: | *yes* | +-------------------+----------------------+ Start Scrapy in server mode, which can be controlled by the :command:`queue` command. Usage example:: $ scrapy runserver [ ... scrapy starts and stays idle waiting for spiders to get scheduled ... ] You can now schedule spiders to run using the :command:`queue` command. If there were spiders already enqueued, it will start crawling them. .. command:: list list ---- +-------------------+-----------------+ | Syntax: | ``scrapy list`` | +-------------------+-----------------+ | Requires project: | *yes* | +-------------------+-----------------+ List all available spiders in the current project. The output is one spider per line. Usage example:: $ scrapy list spider1 spider2 .. command:: fetch fetch ----- +-------------------+------------------------+ | Syntax: | ``scrapy fetch `` | +-------------------+------------------------+ | Requires project: | *no* | +-------------------+------------------------+ Downloads the given URL using the Scrapy downloader and writes the contents to standard output. The interesting thing about this command is that it fetches the page how the the spider would download it. For example, if the spider has an ``user_agent`` attribute which overrides the User Agent, it will use that one. So this command can be used to "see" how your spider would fetch certain page. If used outside a project, no particular per-spider behaviour would be applied and it will just use the default Scrapy downloder settings. Usage examples:: $ scrapy fetch --nolog http://www.example.com/some/page.html [ ... html content here ... ] $ scrapy fetch --nolog --headers http://www.example.com/ {'Accept-Ranges': ['bytes'], 'Age': ['1263 '], 'Connection': ['close '], 'Content-Length': ['596'], 'Content-Type': ['text/html; charset=UTF-8'], 'Date': ['Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:59:46 GMT'], 'Etag': ['"573c1-254-48c9c87349680"'], 'Last-Modified': ['Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:30:18 GMT'], 'Server': ['Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS)']} .. command:: view view ---- +-------------------+-----------------------+ | Syntax: | ``scrapy view `` | +-------------------+-----------------------+ | Requires project: | *no* | +-------------------+-----------------------+ Opens the given URL in a browser, as your Scrapy spider would "see" it. Sometimes spiders see pages differently from regular users, so this can be used to check what the spider "sees" and confirm it's what you expect. Usage example:: $ scrapy view http://www.example.com/some/page.html [ ... browser starts ... ] .. command:: shell shell ----- +-------------------+------------------------+ | Syntax: | ``scrapy shell [url]`` | +-------------------+------------------------+ | Requires project: | *no* | +-------------------+------------------------+ Starts the Scrapy shell for the given URL (if given) or empty if not URL is given. See :ref:`topics-shell` for more info. Usage example:: $ scrapy shell http://www.example.com/some/page.html [ ... scrapy shell starts ... ] .. command:: parse parse ----- +-------------------+----------------------------------+ | Syntax: | ``scrapy parse [options]`` | +-------------------+----------------------------------+ | Requires project: | *yes* | +-------------------+----------------------------------+ Fetches the given URL and parses with the spider that handles it, using the method passed with the ``--callback`` option, or ``parse`` if not given. Supported options: * ``--callback`` or ``-c``: spider method to use as callback for parsing the response * ``--rules`` or ``-r``: use :class:`~scrapy.contrib.spiders.CrawlSpider` rules to discover the callback (ie. spider method) for parsing the response * ``--noitems``: don't show extracted links * ``--nolinks``: don't show scraped items Usage example:: $ scrapy parse http://www.example.com/ -c parse_item [ ... scrapy log lines crawling example.com spider ... ] # Scraped Items - callback: parse ------------------------------------------------------------ MyItem({'name': u"Example item", 'category': u'Furniture', 'length': u'12 cm'} ) .. command:: settings settings -------- +-------------------+-------------------------------+ | Syntax: | ``scrapy settings [options]`` | +-------------------+-------------------------------+ | Requires project: | *no* | +-------------------+-------------------------------+ Get the value of a Scrapy setting. If used inside a project it'll show the project setting value, otherwise it'll show the default Scrapy value for that setting. Example usage:: $ scrapy settings --get BOT_NAME scrapybot $ scrapy settings --get DOWNLOAD_DELAY 0 .. command:: runspider runspider --------- +-------------------+---------------------------------------+ | Syntax: | ``scrapy runspider `` | +-------------------+---------------------------------------+ | Requires project: | *no* | +-------------------+---------------------------------------+ Run a spider self-contained in a Python file, without having to create a project. Example usage:: $ scrapy runspider myspider.py [ ... spider starts crawling ... ] .. command:: queue queue ----- +-------------------+----------------------------------------------+ | Syntax: | ``scrapy queue `` | +-------------------+----------------------------------------------+ | Requires project: | *yes* | +-------------------+----------------------------------------------+ Manage the execution queue of a Scrapy project. This command is meant to be used to control a Scrapy server started with the :command:`runserver` command. Example usage:: $ scrapy queue add example.com If there is a Scrapy server running (see :command:`runserver` command), it will start crawling the ``example.com`` spider. Otherwise, it will only get enqueued,, and it will start crawling once the Scrapy server is started. You can also view the spiders enqueued but not yet started:: $ scrapy queue list And clear the queue:: $ scrapy queue clear