Scheduling Crawls and Running Multiple Spiders in Scrapy

Scrapy is a robust web scraping library that is extensively used for extracting data from sites. While setting up a simple spider to extract data might be straightforward, scaling up to perform scheduled crawls and run multiple spiders simultaneously can be more complex. In this article, we will explore how you can schedule your Scrapy crawls and execute multiple spiders to efficiently gather data.

Scheduling Crawls in Scrapy

The job scheduling capability can be tremendously beneficial when executing recurrent tasks like web scraping. Although Scrapy does not provide built-in scheduling, tools like ScrapyD and various Job Schedulers like Cron or Windows Task Scheduler can be utilized.

Using ScrapyD

ScrapyD is an API service that aids remote task scheduling and allows spiders to be started from the command line or web services. Follow these steps to set up ScrapyD:

Step 1: Install ScrapyD:

pip install scrapyd

Step 2: Launch ScrapyD:

scrapyd

When ScrapyD is initiated, it sets up a web server to listen for scheduling requests on port 6800 by default.

Step 3: Schedule a Scrapy crawl using curl:

curl http://localhost:6800/schedule.json -d project=my_project -d spider=my_spider

This command triggers the execution of "my_spider" from "my_project." Additional options allow you to specify parameters and control the scheduling frequency using cron expressions.

Using System Task Schedulers

To integrate cron jobs with Scrapy, add a cron entry to run a Scrapy spider at fixed intervals:

0 3 * * * /usr/bin/scrapy crawl my_spider

This example executes the "my_spider" every day at 3 AM. Windows Task Scheduler is similarly powerful for scheduling tasks on a Windows environment.

Running Multiple Spiders

There are situations where running multiple spiders concurrently can significantly enhance the data gathering process. Scrapy facilitates this approach by allowing the creation of scripts to conduct multiple spiders concurrently.

Run Multiple Spiders Sequentially

One simple way to run multiple spiders is sequential execution via a single command:

from scrapy.crawler import CrawlerProcess
from my_project.spiders.spider1 import Spider1
from my_project.spiders.spider2 import Spider2

process = CrawlerProcess()
process.crawl(Spider1)
process.crawl(Spider2)
process.start()

This script ensures the spiders execute one after another within the same process. This method is resource-efficient for small-scale scraping tasks and experimental purposes.

Run Multiple Spiders Concurrently

In scenarios requiring enhanced efficiency and speed, running multiple spiders concurrently is a better approach. Here's an example of how this can be accomplished:

from scrapy.utils.project import get_project_settings
from twisted.internet import reactor
from scrapy.crawler import CrawlerRunner

def run_spider(spider):
    runner = CrawlerRunner(get_project_settings())
    runner.crawl(spider)

result = run_spider(Spider1)
result.addBoth(lambda _: run_spider(Spider2))
result.addBoth(lambda _: reactor.stop())
reactor.run()

By leveraging the reactor from the Twisted framework, we've established concurrent execution of different spiders. The addition of addBoth facilitates each spider to be hosted and run smoothly.

Conclusion

Optimizing data mining through web scraping demands advanced strategies like scheduling regular crawls or running multiple spiders. By utilizing tools like ScrapyD, native system schedulers, and parallelization scripts, Scrapy offers a flexible framework for efficient web scraping. Mastering these techniques allows for increased operational capacity and ultimately eases the data acquisition process for large-scale applications.