Feed exports

New in version 0.10.

One of the most frequently required features when implementing scrapers is being able to store the scraped data properly and, quite often, that means generating an “export file” with the scraped data (commonly called “export feed”) to be consumed by other systems.

Scrapy provides this functionality out of the box with the Feed Exports, which allows you to generate a feed with the scraped items, using multiple serialization formats and storage backends.

Serialization formats

For serializing the scraped data, the feed exports use the Item exporters. These formats are supported out of the box:

But you can also extend the supported format through the FEED_EXPORTERS setting.

JSON

JSON lines

CSV

  • FEED_FORMAT: csv
  • Exporter used: CsvItemExporter
  • To specify columns to export and their order use FEED_EXPORT_FIELDS. Other feed exporters can also use this option, but it is important for CSV because unlike many other export formats CSV uses a fixed header.

XML

Pickle

Marshal

  • FEED_FORMAT: marshal
  • Exporter used: MarshalItemExporter

Storages

When using the feed exports you define where to store the feed using a URI (through the FEED_URI setting). The feed exports supports multiple storage backend types which are defined by the URI scheme.

The storages backends supported out of the box are:

Some storage backends may be unavailable if the required external libraries are not available. For example, the S3 backend is only available if the botocore or boto library is installed (Scrapy supports boto only on Python 2).

Storage URI parameters

The storage URI can also contain parameters that get replaced when the feed is being created. These parameters are:

  • %(time)s - gets replaced by a timestamp when the feed is being created
  • %(name)s - gets replaced by the spider name

Any other named parameter gets replaced by the spider attribute of the same name. For example, %(site_id)s would get replaced by the spider.site_id attribute the moment the feed is being created.

Here are some examples to illustrate:

  • Store in FTP using one directory per spider:
    • ftp://user:password@ftp.example.com/scraping/feeds/%(name)s/%(time)s.json
  • Store in S3 using one directory per spider:
    • s3://mybucket/scraping/feeds/%(name)s/%(time)s.json

Storage backends

Local filesystem

The feeds are stored in the local filesystem.

  • URI scheme: file
  • Example URI: file:///tmp/export.csv
  • Required external libraries: none

Note that for the local filesystem storage (only) you can omit the scheme if you specify an absolute path like /tmp/export.csv. This only works on Unix systems though.

FTP

The feeds are stored in a FTP server.

  • URI scheme: ftp
  • Example URI: ftp://user:pass@ftp.example.com/path/to/export.csv
  • Required external libraries: none

S3

The feeds are stored on Amazon S3.

  • URI scheme: s3
  • Example URIs:
    • s3://mybucket/path/to/export.csv
    • s3://aws_key:aws_secret@mybucket/path/to/export.csv
  • Required external libraries: botocore or boto

The AWS credentials can be passed as user/password in the URI, or they can be passed through the following settings:

Standard output

The feeds are written to the standard output of the Scrapy process.

  • URI scheme: stdout
  • Example URI: stdout:
  • Required external libraries: none

Settings

These are the settings used for configuring the feed exports:

FEED_URI

Default: None

The URI of the export feed. See Storage backends for supported URI schemes.

This setting is required for enabling the feed exports.

FEED_FORMAT

The serialization format to be used for the feed. See Serialization formats for possible values.

FEED_EXPORT_ENCODING

Default: None

The encoding to be used for the feed.

If unset or set to None (default) it uses UTF-8 for everything except JSON output, which uses safe numeric encoding (\uXXXX sequences) for historic reasons.

Use utf-8 if you want UTF-8 for JSON too.

FEED_EXPORT_FIELDS

Default: None

A list of fields to export, optional. Example: FEED_EXPORT_FIELDS = ["foo", "bar", "baz"].

Use FEED_EXPORT_FIELDS option to define fields to export and their order.

When FEED_EXPORT_FIELDS is empty or None (default), Scrapy uses fields defined in dicts or Item subclasses a spider is yielding.

If an exporter requires a fixed set of fields (this is the case for CSV export format) and FEED_EXPORT_FIELDS is empty or None, then Scrapy tries to infer field names from the exported data - currently it uses field names from the first item.

FEED_EXPORT_INDENT

Default: 0

Amount of spaces used to indent the output on each level. If FEED_EXPORT_INDENT is a non-negative integer, then array elements and object members will be pretty-printed with that indent level. An indent level of 0 (the default), or negative, will put each item on a new line. None selects the most compact representation.

Currently implemented only by JsonItemExporter and XmlItemExporter, i.e. when you are exporting to .json or .xml.

FEED_STORE_EMPTY

Default: False

Whether to export empty feeds (ie. feeds with no items).

FEED_STORAGES

Default: {}

A dict containing additional feed storage backends supported by your project. The keys are URI schemes and the values are paths to storage classes.

FEED_STORAGES_BASE

Default:

{
    '': 'scrapy.extensions.feedexport.FileFeedStorage',
    'file': 'scrapy.extensions.feedexport.FileFeedStorage',
    'stdout': 'scrapy.extensions.feedexport.StdoutFeedStorage',
    's3': 'scrapy.extensions.feedexport.S3FeedStorage',
    'ftp': 'scrapy.extensions.feedexport.FTPFeedStorage',
}

A dict containing the built-in feed storage backends supported by Scrapy. You can disable any of these backends by assigning None to their URI scheme in FEED_STORAGES. E.g., to disable the built-in FTP storage backend (without replacement), place this in your settings.py:

FEED_STORAGES = {
    'ftp': None,
}

FEED_EXPORTERS

Default: {}

A dict containing additional exporters supported by your project. The keys are serialization formats and the values are paths to Item exporter classes.

FEED_EXPORTERS_BASE

Default:

{
    'json': 'scrapy.exporters.JsonItemExporter',
    'jsonlines': 'scrapy.exporters.JsonLinesItemExporter',
    'jl': 'scrapy.exporters.JsonLinesItemExporter',
    'csv': 'scrapy.exporters.CsvItemExporter',
    'xml': 'scrapy.exporters.XmlItemExporter',
    'marshal': 'scrapy.exporters.MarshalItemExporter',
    'pickle': 'scrapy.exporters.PickleItemExporter',
}

A dict containing the built-in feed exporters supported by Scrapy. You can disable any of these exporters by assigning None to their serialization format in FEED_EXPORTERS. E.g., to disable the built-in CSV exporter (without replacement), place this in your settings.py:

FEED_EXPORTERS = {
    'csv': None,
}