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# Command line tool

New in version 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.

## Default structure of Scrapy projects

Before delving into the command-line tool and its sub-commands, let’s first understand the directory structure of a Scrapy project.

Even thought it can be modified, all Scrapy projects have the same file structure by default, similar to this:

    scrapy.cfg
    myproject/
        __init__.py
        items.py
        pipelines.py
        settings.py
        spiders/
            __init__.py
            spider1.py
            spider2.py
            ...

The directory where the `scrapy.cfg` file resides is known as the project root directory. That file contains the name of the python module that defines the project settings. Here is an example:

    [settings]
    default = myproject.settings

## 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 <command> [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 <command> [options] [args]

    [...]

### Creating 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.

### Controlling 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 `crawl`) must be run from inside a Scrapy project. See the 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` per-spider setting) 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.

## Available tool commands

This section contains a list of the available built-in commands with a description and some usage examples. Remember you can always get more info about each command by running:

    scrapy <command> -h

And you can see all available commands with:

    scrapy -h

There are two kinds of commands, those that only work from inside a Scrapy project (Project-specific commands) and those that also work without an active Scrapy project (Global commands), though they may behave slightly different when running from inside a project (as they would use the project overriden settings).

Global commands:

- `startproject`
- `settings`
- `runspider`
- `shell`
- `fetch`
- `view`
- `version`

Project-only commands:

- `crawl`
- `list`
- `edit`
- `parse`
- `genspider`
- `server`
- `deploy`

### startproject

- Syntax: `scrapy startproject <project_name>`
- Requires project: no

Creates a new Scrapy project named `project_name`, under the `project_name` directory.

Usage example:

    $ scrapy startproject myproject

### genspider

- Syntax: `scrapy genspider [-t template] <name> <domain>`
- 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

### crawl

- Syntax: `scrapy crawl <spider>`
- Requires project: yes

Start crawling a spider.

Usage examples:

    $ scrapy crawl myspider
    [ ... myspider starts crawling ... ]

### server

- Syntax: `scrapy server`
- Requires project: yes

Start Scrapyd server for this project, which can be referred from the JSON API with the project name `default`. For more info see: Scrapy Service (scrapyd).

Usage example:

    $ scrapy server
    [ ... scrapyd starts and stays idle waiting for spiders to get scheduled ... ]

To schedule spiders, use the Scrapyd JSON API.

### 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

### edit

- Syntax: `scrapy edit <spider>`
- Requires project: yes

Edit the given spider using the editor defined in the `EDITOR` setting.

This command is provided only as a convenient shortcut for the most common case, the developer is of course free to choose any tool or IDE to write and debug his spiders.

Usage example:

    $ scrapy edit spider1

### fetch

- Syntax: `scrapy fetch <url>`
- 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)']}

### view

- Syntax: `scrapy view <url>`
- 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 ... ]

### 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 Scrapy shell for more info.

Usage example:

    $ scrapy shell http://www.example.com/some/page.html
    [ ... scrapy shell starts ... ]

### parse

- Syntax: `scrapy parse <url> [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 `CrawlSpider` rules to discover the callback (ie. spider method) to use 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'}
    )

### 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

### runspider

- Syntax: `scrapy runspider <spider_file.py>`
- 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 ... ]

### version

- Syntax: `scrapy version [-v]`
- Requires project: no

Prints the Scrapy version. If used with `-v` it also prints Python, Twisted and Platform info, which is useful for bug reports.

### deploy

New in version 0.11.

- Syntax: `scrapy deploy [ <target:project> | -l <target> | -L ]`
- Requires project: yes

Deploy the project into a Scrapyd server. See Deploying your project.

## Custom project commands

You can also add your custom project commands by using the `COMMANDS_MODULE` setting. See the Scrapy commands in scrapy/commands for examples on how to implement your commands.

### COMMANDS_MODULE

Default: `''` (empty string)

A module to use for looking custom Scrapy commands. This is used to add custom commands for your Scrapy project.

Example:

    COMMANDS_MODULE = 'mybot.commands'

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