Scrapy talk at DataPhilly

ScrapyPatrick O’Brien | @obdit

DataPhilly | 20131118 | Monetate

Steps of data science

● Obtain● Scrub● Explore● Model● iNterpret

Steps of data science

● Obtain Scrapy● Scrub● Explore● Model● iNterpret

About Scrapy

● Framework for collecting data● Open source - 100% python● Simple and well documented● OSX, Linux, Windows, BSD

Some of the features

● Built-in selectors● Generating feed output

○ Format: json, csv, xml○ Storage: local, FTP, S3, stdout

● Encoding and autodetection ● Stats collection● Control via a web service● Handle cookies, auth, robots.txt, user-agent

Scrapy Architecture

Data flow1. Engine opens, locates Spider, schedule first url as a Request2. Scheduler sends url to the Engine, which sends it to Downloader3. Downloader sends completed page as a Response through the

middleware to the engine4. Engine sends Response to the Spider through middleware5. Spiders sends Items and new Requests to the Engine6. Engine sends Items to the Item Pipeline and Requests to the Scheduler7. GOTO 2

Parts of Scrapy

● Items● Spider● Link Extractors● Selectors● Request● Responses

Items

● Main container of structured information● dict-like objects

from scrapy.item import Item, Field

class Product(Item): name = Field() price = Field() stock = Field() last_updated = Field(serializer=str)

Items>>> product = Product(name='Desktop PC', price=1000)

>>> print product

Product(name='Desktop PC', price=1000)

>>> product['name']

Desktop PC

>>> product.get('name')

Desktop PC

>>> product.keys()

['price', 'name']

>>> product.items()

[('price', 1000), ('name', 'Desktop PC')]

Spiders

● Define how to move around a site○ which links to follow○ how to extract data

● Cycle○ Initial request and callback○ Store parsed content○ Subsequent requests and callbacks

Generic Spiders

● BaseSpider● CrawlSpider● XMLFeedSpider● CSVFeedSpider● SitemapSpider

BaseSpider

● Every other spider inherits from BaseSpider● Two jobs

○ Request `start_urls`○ Callback `parse` on resulting response

BaseSpider...

class MySpider(BaseSpider):

name = 'example.com'

allowed_domains = ['example.com']

start_urls = [

'http://www.example.com/1.html',

'http://www.example.com/2.html',

'http://www.example.com/3.html',

]

def parse(self, response):

sel = Selector(response)

for h3 in sel.xpath('//h3').extract():

yield MyItem(title=h3)

for url in sel.xpath('//a/@href').extract():

yield Request(url, callback=self.parse)

● Send Requests example.com/[1:3].html

● Yield title Item

● Yield new Request

CrawlSpider

● Provide a set of rules on what links to follow○ `link_extractor`○ `call_back`

rules = (

# Extract links matching 'category.php' (but not matching 'subsection.php')

# and follow links from them (since no callback means follow=True by default).

Rule(SgmlLinkExtractor(allow=('category\.php', ), deny=('subsection\.php', ))),

# Extract links matching 'item.php' and parse them with the spider's method parse_item

Rule(SgmlLinkExtractor(allow=('item\.php', )), callback='parse_item'),

)

Link Extractors

● Extract links from Response objects● Parameters include:

○ allow | deny○ allow_domains | deny_domains○ deny_extensions○ restrict_xpaths○ tags○ attrs

Selectors

● Mechanisms for extracting data from HTML● Built over the lxml library● Two methods

○ XPath: sel.xpath('//a[contains(@href, "image")]/@href' ).

extract()

○ CSS: sel.css('a[href*=image]::attr(href)' ).extract()

● Response object is called into Selector○ sel = Selector(response)

Request

● Generated in Spider, sent to Downloader● Represent an HTTP request● FormRequest subclass performs HTTP

POST○ useful to simulate user login

Response

● Comes from Downloader and sent to Spider● Represents HTTP response● Subclasses

○ TextResponse○ HTMLResponse○ XmlResponse

Advanced Scrapy

● Scrapyd○ application to deploy and run Scrapy spiders○ deploy projects and control with JSON API

● Signals○ notify when events occur○ hook into Signals API for advance tuning

● Extensions○ Custom functionality loaded at Scrapy startup

More information

● http://doc.scrapy.org/● https://twitter.com/ScrapyProject● https://github.com/scrapy● http://scrapyd.readthedocs.org

Demo