Deploying a project

1. Change (cd) to the root of your project (the directory containing the scrapy.cfg file)

2. Eggify your project and upload it to the target:

   scrapyd-deploy <target> -p <project>

If you don’t have a setup.py file in the root of your project, one will be created. If you have one, it must set the entry_points keyword argument in the setup() function call, for example:

setup(
    name         = 'project',
    version      = '1.0',
    packages     = find_packages(),
    entry_points = {'scrapy': ['settings = projectname.settings']},
)

If the command is successful, you should see a JSON response, like:

Deploying myproject-1287453519 to http://localhost:6800/addversion.json
Server response (200):
{"status": "ok", "spiders": ["spider1", "spider2"]}

To save yourself from having to specify the target and project, you can configure your defaults in the Scrapy configuration file.

Versioning

By default, scrapyd-deploy uses the current timestamp for generating the project version. You can pass a custom version using --version:

scrapyd-deploy <target> -p <project> --version <version>

See Scrapyd’s documentation on how it determines the latest version.

If you use Mercurial or Git, you can use HG or GIT respectively as the argument supplied to --version to use the current revision as the version. You can save yourself having to specify the version parameter by adding it to your target’s entry in scrapy.cfg:

[deploy]
...
version = HG

Note: The version keyword argument in the setup() function call in the setup.py file has no meaning to Scrapyd.

Include dependencies

1. Create a requirements.txt file at the root of your project, alongside the scrapy.cfg file

2. Use the --include-dependencies option when building or deploying your project:

   scrapyd-deploy --include-dependencies

Alternatively, you can install the dependencies directly on the Scrapyd server.

Include data files

1. Create a setup.py file at the root of your project, alongside the scrapy.cfg file, if you don’t have one:

   scrapyd-deploy --build-egg=/dev/null

2. Set the package_data and include_package_data` keyword arguments in the ``setup() function call in the setup.py file. For example:

   from setuptools import setup, find_packages
   
   setup(
       name         = 'project',
       version      = '1.0',
       packages     = find_packages(),
       entry_points = {'scrapy': ['settings = projectname.settings']},
       package_data = {'projectname': ['path/to/*.json']},
       include_package_data = True,
   )

Local settings

You may want to keep certain settings local and not have them deployed to Scrapyd.

1. Create a local_settings.py file at the root of your project, alongside the scrapy.cfg file

2. Add the following to your project’s settings file:

   try:
       from local_settings import *
   except ImportError:
       pass

scrapyd-deploy doesn’t deploy anything outside of the project module, so the local_settings.py file won’t be deployed.

Troubleshooting

• Problem: A settings file for local development is being included in the egg.

  Solution: See Local settings. Or, exclude the module from the egg. If using scrapyd-client’s default setup.py file, change the find_package() call:

  setup(
      name         = 'project',
      version      = '1.0',
      packages     = find_packages(),
      entry_points = {'scrapy': ['settings = projectname.settings']},
  )

  to:

  setup(
      name         = 'project',
      version      = '1.0',
      packages     = find_packages(exclude=["myproject.devsettings"]),
      entry_points = {'scrapy': ['settings = projectname.settings']},
  )

• Problem: Code using __file__ breaks when run in Scrapyd.

  Solution: Use pkgutil.get_data instead. For example, change:

  path = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))  # BAD
  open(os.path.join(path, "tools", "json", "test.json"), "rb").read()

  to:

  import pkgutil
  pkgutil.get_data("projectname", "tools/json/test.json")

• Be careful when writing to disk in your project, as Scrapyd will most likely be running under a different user which may not have write access to certain directories. If you can, avoid writing to disk and always use tempfile for temporary files.

• If you use a proxy, use the HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, NO_PROXY and/or ALL_PROXY environment variables, as documented by the requests package.

deploy

This is a wrapper around scrapyd-deploy.

targets

Lists all targets:

scrapyd-client targets

projects

Lists all projects of a Scrapyd instance:

# lists all projects on the default target
scrapyd-client projects
# lists all projects from a custom URL
scrapyd-client -t http://scrapyd.example.net projects

schedule

Schedules one or more spiders to be executed:

# schedules any spider
scrapyd-client schedule
# schedules all spiders from the 'knowledge' project
scrapyd-client schedule -p knowledge \*
# schedules any spider from any project whose name ends with '_daily'
scrapyd-client schedule -p \* \*_daily
# schedules spider1 in project1 specifying settings
scrapyd-client schedule -p project1 spider1 --arg 'setting=DOWNLOADER_MIDDLEWARES={"my.middleware.MyDownloader": 610}'

spiders

Lists spiders of one or more projects:

# lists all spiders
scrapyd-client spiders
# lists all spiders from the 'knowledge' project
scrapyd-client spiders -p knowledge

Targets

You can define a Scrapyd target in your project’s scrapy.cfg file. Example:

[deploy]
url = http://scrapyd.example.com/api/scrapyd
username = scrapy
password = secret
project = projectname

You can now deploy your project without the <target> argument or -p <project> option:

scrapyd-deploy

If you have multiple targets, add the target name in the section name. Example:

[deploy:targetname]
url = http://scrapyd.example.com/api/scrapyd

[deploy:another]
url = http://other.example.com/api/scrapyd

If you are working with CD frameworks, you do not need to commit your secrets to your repository. You can use environment variable expansion like so:

[deploy]
url = $SCRAPYD_URL
username = $SCRAPYD_USERNAME
password = $SCRAPYD_PASSWORD

or using this syntax:

[deploy]
url = ${SCRAPYD_URL}
username = ${SCRAPYD_USERNAME}
password = ${SCRAPYD_PASSWORD}

To deploy to one target, run:

scrapyd-deploy targetname -p <project>

To deploy to all targets, use the -a option:

scrapyd-deploy -a -p <project>

While your target needs to be defined with its URL in scrapy.cfg, you can use netrc for username and password, like so:

machine scrapyd.example.com
    login scrapy
    password secret