Advanced usages

Concurrency Control

The spider system uses three class attributes to control how aggressively it crawls:

Attribute	Default	Description
`concurrent_requests`	`4`	Maximum number of requests being processed at the same time
`concurrent_requests_per_domain`	`0`	Maximum concurrent requests per domain (0 = no per-domain limit)
`download_delay`	`0.0`	Seconds to wait before each request
`robots_txt_obey`	`False`	Respect robots.txt rules (Disallow, Crawl-delay, Request-rate)

python

class PoliteSpider(Spider):
    name = "polite"
    start_urls = ["https://example.com"]

    # Be gentle with the server
    concurrent_requests = 4
    concurrent_requests_per_domain = 2
    download_delay = 1.0  # Wait 1 second between requests

    async def parse(self, response: Response):
        yield {"title": response.css("title::text").get("")}

When concurrent_requests_per_domain is set, each domain gets its own concurrency limiter in addition to the global limit. This is useful when crawling multiple domains simultaneously - you can allow high global concurrency while being polite to each individual domain.

Tip: The download_delay parameter adds a fixed wait before every request, regardless of the domain. Use it for simple rate limiting.

Using uvloop

The start() method accepts a use_uvloop parameter to use the faster uvloop/winloop event loop implementation, if available:

python

result = MySpider().start(use_uvloop=True)

This can improve throughput for I/O-heavy crawls. You'll need to install uvloop (Linux/macOS) or winloop (Windows) separately.

Pause & Resume

The spider supports graceful pause-and-resume via checkpointing. To enable it, pass a crawldir directory to the spider constructor:

python

spider = MySpider(crawldir="crawl_data/my_spider")
result = spider.start()

if result.paused:
    print("Crawl was paused. Run again to resume.")
else:
    print("Crawl completed!")

How It Works

Pausing: Press Ctrl+C during a crawl. The spider waits for all in-flight requests to finish, saves a checkpoint (pending requests + a set of seen request fingerprints), and then exits.
Force stopping: Press Ctrl+C a second time to stop immediately without waiting for active tasks.
Resuming: Run the spider again with the same crawldir. It detects the checkpoint, restores the queue and seen set, and continues from where it left off, skipping start_requests().
Cleanup: When a crawl completes normally (not paused), the checkpoint files are deleted automatically.

Checkpoints are also saved periodically during the crawl (every 5 minutes by default).

You can change the interval as follows:

python

# Save checkpoint every 2 minutes
spider = MySpider(crawldir="crawl_data/my_spider", interval=120.0)

The writing to the disk is atomic, so it's totally safe.

Tip: Pressing Ctrl+C during a crawl always causes the spider to close gracefully, even if the checkpoint system is not enabled. Doing it again without waiting forces the spider to close immediately.

Knowing If You're Resuming

The on_start() hook receives a resuming flag:

python

async def on_start(self, resuming: bool = False):
    if resuming:
        self.logger.info("Resuming from checkpoint!")
    else:
        self.logger.info("Starting fresh crawl")

Development Mode

When you're iterating on a spider's parse() logic, re-hitting the target servers on every run is slow and noisy. Development mode caches every response to disk on the first run and replays them from disk on subsequent runs, so you can tweak your selectors and re-run the spider as many times as you want without making a single network request.

Enable it by setting development_mode = True on your spider:

python

class MySpider(Spider):
    name = "my_spider"
    start_urls = ["https://example.com"]
    development_mode = True

    async def parse(self, response: Response):
        yield {"title": response.css("title::text").get("")}

The first run fetches normally and stores each response on disk. Every subsequent run serves the same requests from the cache, skipping the network entirely.

Cache Location

By default, responses are cached in .scrapling_cache/{spider.name}/ relative to the current working directory (where you ran the spider from, not where the spider script lives). You can override the location with development_cache_dir:

python

class MySpider(Spider):
    name = "my_spider"
    start_urls = ["https://example.com"]
    development_mode = True
    development_cache_dir = "/tmp/my_spider_cache"

How It Works

Cache key: Each response is keyed by the request's fingerprint, so any change to fingerprint-affecting attributes (fp_include_kwargs, fp_include_headers, fp_keep_fragments) will produce a fresh fetch.
Storage format: One JSON file per response, named {fingerprint_hex}.json. The body is base64-encoded so binary content is preserved exactly. Writes are atomic (temp file + rename).
Replay: On a cache hit, the engine skips the network entirely, including download_delay, rate limiting, and the is_blocked() retry path. The cached response goes straight to your callback.
Stats: Cached requests still count toward requests_count, response_bytes, and the per-status counters, so your stat output looks the same as a normal crawl. Two extra counters, cache_hits and cache_misses, let you see how the cache performed.

Clearing the Cache

There's no automatic expiration. To force a fresh crawl, delete the cache directory or call the manager's clear() method directly.

Warning: Development mode is meant for development, not production. Cached responses never expire, and replay bypasses rate limiting and blocked-request retries. Don't ship a spider with development_mode = True.

Streaming

For long-running spiders or applications that need real-time access to scraped items, use the stream() method instead of start():

python

import anyio

async def main():
    spider = MySpider()
    async for item in spider.stream():
        print(f"Got item: {item}")
        # Access real-time stats
        print(f"Items so far: {spider.stats.items_scraped}")
        print(f"Requests made: {spider.stats.requests_count}")

anyio.run(main)

Key differences from start():

stream() must be called from an async context
Items are yielded one by one as they're scraped, not collected into a list
You can access spider.stats during iteration for real-time statistics

Note: The full list of all stats that can be accessed by spider.stats is explained below here.

You can use it with the checkpoint system too, so it's easy to build UI on top of spiders. UIs that have real-time data and can be paused/resumed.

python

import anyio

async def main():
    spider = MySpider(crawldir="crawl_data/my_spider")
    async for item in spider.stream():
        print(f"Got item: {item}")
        # Access real-time stats
        print(f"Items so far: {spider.stats.items_scraped}")
        print(f"Requests made: {spider.stats.requests_count}")

anyio.run(main)

You can also use spider.pause() to shut down the spider in the code above. If you used it without enabling the checkpoint system, it will just close the crawl.

Lifecycle Hooks

The spider provides several hooks you can override to add custom behavior at different stages of the crawl:

on_start

Called before crawling begins. Use it for setup tasks like loading data or initializing resources:

python

async def on_start(self, resuming: bool = False):
    self.logger.info("Spider starting up")
    # Load seed URLs from a database, initialize counters, etc.

on_close

Called after crawling finishes (whether completed or paused). Use it for cleanup:

python

async def on_close(self):
    self.logger.info("Spider shutting down")
    # Close database connections, flush buffers, etc.

on_error

Called when a request fails with an exception. Use it for error tracking or custom recovery logic:

python

async def on_error(self, request: Request, error: Exception):
    self.logger.error(f"Failed: {request.url} - {error}")
    # Log to error tracker, save failed URL for later, etc.

on_scraped_item

Called for every scraped item before it's added to the results. Return the item (modified or not) to keep it, or return None to drop it:

python

async def on_scraped_item(self, item: dict) -> dict | None:
    # Drop items without a title
    if not item.get("title"):
        return None

    # Modify items (e.g., add timestamps)
    item["scraped_at"] = "2026-01-01"
    return item

Tip: This hook can also be used to direct items through your own pipelines and drop them from the spider.

start_requests

Override start_requests() for custom initial request generation instead of using start_urls:

python

async def start_requests(self):
    # POST request to log in first
    yield Request(
        "https://example.com/login",
        method="POST",
        data={"user": "admin", "pass": "secret"},
        callback=self.after_login,
    )

async def after_login(self, response: Response):
    # Now crawl the authenticated pages
    yield response.follow("/dashboard", callback=self.parse)

Results & Statistics

The CrawlResult returned by start() contains both the scraped items and detailed statistics:

python

result = MySpider().start()

# Items
print(f"Total items: {len(result.items)}")
result.items.to_json("output.json", indent=True)

# Did the crawl complete?
print(f"Completed: {result.completed}")
print(f"Paused: {result.paused}")

# Statistics
stats = result.stats
print(f"Requests: {stats.requests_count}")
print(f"Failed: {stats.failed_requests_count}")
print(f"Blocked: {stats.blocked_requests_count}")
print(f"Offsite filtered: {stats.offsite_requests_count}")
print(f"Robots.txt disallowed: {stats.robots_disallowed_count}")
print(f"Cache hits: {stats.cache_hits}")
print(f"Cache misses: {stats.cache_misses}")
print(f"Items scraped: {stats.items_scraped}")
print(f"Items dropped: {stats.items_dropped}")
print(f"Response bytes: {stats.response_bytes}")
print(f"Duration: {stats.elapsed_seconds:.1f}s")
print(f"Speed: {stats.requests_per_second:.1f} req/s")

Detailed Stats

The CrawlStats object tracks granular information:

python

stats = result.stats

# Status code distribution
print(stats.response_status_count)
# {'status_200': 150, 'status_404': 3, 'status_403': 1}

# Bytes downloaded per domain
print(stats.domains_response_bytes)
# {'example.com': 1234567, 'api.example.com': 45678}

# Requests per session
print(stats.sessions_requests_count)
# {'http': 120, 'stealth': 34}

# Proxies used during the crawl
print(stats.proxies)
# ['http://proxy1:8080', 'http://proxy2:8080']

# Log level counts
print(stats.log_levels_counter)
# {'debug': 200, 'info': 50, 'warning': 3, 'error': 1, 'critical': 0}

# Timing information
print(stats.start_time)       # Unix timestamp when crawl started
print(stats.end_time)         # Unix timestamp when crawl finished
print(stats.download_delay)   # The download delay used (seconds)

# Concurrency settings used
print(stats.concurrent_requests)             # Global concurrency limit
print(stats.concurrent_requests_per_domain)  # Per-domain concurrency limit

# Custom stats (set by your spider code)
print(stats.custom_stats)
# {'login_attempts': 3, 'pages_with_errors': 5}

# Export everything as a dict
print(stats.to_dict())

Logging

The spider has a built-in logger accessible via self.logger. It's pre-configured with the spider's name and supports several customization options:

Attribute	Default	Description
`logging_level`	`logging.DEBUG`	Minimum log level
`logging_format`	`"[%(asctime)s]:({spider_name}) %(levelname)s: %(message)s"`	Log message format
`logging_date_format`	`"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"`	Date format in log messages
`log_file`	`None`	Path to a log file (in addition to console output)

python

import logging

class MySpider(Spider):
    name = "my_spider"
    start_urls = ["https://example.com"]
    logging_level = logging.INFO
    log_file = "logs/my_spider.log"

    async def parse(self, response: Response):
        self.logger.info(f"Processing {response.url}")
        yield {"title": response.css("title::text").get("")}

The log file directory is created automatically if it doesn't exist. Both console and file output use the same format.