Settings

The Scrapy settings allows you to customize the behaviour of all Scrapy components, including the core, extensions, pipelines and spiders themselves.

The infrastructure of the settings provides a global namespace of key-value mappings that the code can use to pull configuration values from. The settings can be populated through different mechanisms, which are described below.

The settings are also the mechanism for selecting the currently active Scrapy project (in case you have many).

For a list of available built-in settings see: Built-in settings reference.

Designating the settings

When you use Scrapy, you have to tell it which settings you’re using. You can do this by using an environment variable, SCRAPY_SETTINGS_MODULE.

The value of SCRAPY_SETTINGS_MODULE should be in Python path syntax, e.g. myproject.settings. Note that the settings module should be on the Python import search path.

Populating the settings

Settings can be populated using different mechanisms, each of which having a different precedence. Here is the list of them in decreasing order of precedence:

  1. Command line options (most precedence)
  2. Settings per-spider
  3. Project settings module
  4. Default settings per-command
  5. Default global settings (less precedence)

The population of these settings sources is taken care of internally, but a manual handling is possible using API calls. See the Settings API topic for reference.

These mechanisms are described in more detail below.

1. Command line options

Arguments provided by the command line are the ones that take most precedence, overriding any other options. You can explicitly override one (or more) settings using the -s (or --set) command line option.

Example:

scrapy crawl myspider -s LOG_FILE=scrapy.log

2. Settings per-spider

Spiders (See the Spiders chapter for reference) can define their own settings that will take precedence and override the project ones. They can do so by setting their custom_settings attribute:

class MySpider(scrapy.Spider):
    name = 'myspider'

    custom_settings = {
        'SOME_SETTING': 'some value',
    }

3. Project settings module

The project settings module is the standard configuration file for your Scrapy project, it’s where most of your custom settings will be populated. For a standard Scrapy project, this means you’ll be adding or changing the settings in the settings.py file created for your project.

4. Default settings per-command

Each Scrapy tool command can have its own default settings, which override the global default settings. Those custom command settings are specified in the default_settings attribute of the command class.

5. Default global settings

The global defaults are located in the scrapy.settings.default_settings module and documented in the Built-in settings reference section.

How to access settings

In a spider, the settings are available through self.settings:

class MySpider(scrapy.Spider):
    name = 'myspider'
    start_urls = ['http://example.com']

    def parse(self, response):
        print("Existing settings: %s" % self.settings.attributes.keys())

Note

The settings attribute is set in the base Spider class after the spider is initialized. If you want to use the settings before the initialization (e.g., in your spider’s __init__() method), you’ll need to override the from_crawler() method.

Settings can be accessed through the scrapy.crawler.Crawler.settings attribute of the Crawler that is passed to from_crawler method in extensions, middlewares and item pipelines:

class MyExtension(object):
    def __init__(self, log_is_enabled=False):
        if log_is_enabled:
            print("log is enabled!")

    @classmethod
    def from_crawler(cls, crawler):
        settings = crawler.settings
        return cls(settings.getbool('LOG_ENABLED'))

The settings object can be used like a dict (e.g., settings['LOG_ENABLED']), but it’s usually preferred to extract the setting in the format you need it to avoid type errors, using one of the methods provided by the Settings API.

Rationale for setting names

Setting names are usually prefixed with the component that they configure. For example, proper setting names for a fictional robots.txt extension would be ROBOTSTXT_ENABLED, ROBOTSTXT_OBEY, ROBOTSTXT_CACHEDIR, etc.

Built-in settings reference

Here’s a list of all available Scrapy settings, in alphabetical order, along with their default values and the scope where they apply.

The scope, where available, shows where the setting is being used, if it’s tied to any particular component. In that case the module of that component will be shown, typically an extension, middleware or pipeline. It also means that the component must be enabled in order for the setting to have any effect.

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID

Default: None

The AWS access key used by code that requires access to Amazon Web services, such as the S3 feed storage backend.

AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Default: None

The AWS secret key used by code that requires access to Amazon Web services, such as the S3 feed storage backend.

BOT_NAME

Default: 'scrapybot'

The name of the bot implemented by this Scrapy project (also known as the project name). This will be used to construct the User-Agent by default, and also for logging.

It’s automatically populated with your project name when you create your project with the startproject command.

CONCURRENT_ITEMS

Default: 100

Maximum number of concurrent items (per response) to process in parallel in the Item Processor (also known as the Item Pipeline).

CONCURRENT_REQUESTS

Default: 16

The maximum number of concurrent (ie. simultaneous) requests that will be performed by the Scrapy downloader.

CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_DOMAIN

Default: 8

The maximum number of concurrent (ie. simultaneous) requests that will be performed to any single domain.

See also: AutoThrottle extension and its AUTOTHROTTLE_TARGET_CONCURRENCY option.

CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_IP

Default: 0

The maximum number of concurrent (ie. simultaneous) requests that will be performed to any single IP. If non-zero, the CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_DOMAIN setting is ignored, and this one is used instead. In other words, concurrency limits will be applied per IP, not per domain.

This setting also affects DOWNLOAD_DELAY and AutoThrottle extension: if CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_IP is non-zero, download delay is enforced per IP, not per domain.

DEFAULT_ITEM_CLASS

Default: 'scrapy.item.Item'

The default class that will be used for instantiating items in the the Scrapy shell.

DEFAULT_REQUEST_HEADERS

Default:

{
    'Accept': 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8',
    'Accept-Language': 'en',
}

The default headers used for Scrapy HTTP Requests. They’re populated in the DefaultHeadersMiddleware.

DEPTH_LIMIT

Default: 0

Scope: scrapy.spidermiddlewares.depth.DepthMiddleware

The maximum depth that will be allowed to crawl for any site. If zero, no limit will be imposed.

DEPTH_PRIORITY

Default: 0

Scope: scrapy.spidermiddlewares.depth.DepthMiddleware

An integer that is used to adjust the request priority based on its depth:

  • if zero (default), no priority adjustment is made from depth
  • a positive value will decrease the priority, i.e. higher depth requests will be processed later ; this is commonly used when doing breadth-first crawls (BFO)
  • a negative value will increase priority, i.e., higher depth requests will be processed sooner (DFO)

See also: Does Scrapy crawl in breadth-first or depth-first order? about tuning Scrapy for BFO or DFO.

Note

This setting adjusts priority in the opposite way compared to other priority settings REDIRECT_PRIORITY_ADJUST and RETRY_PRIORITY_ADJUST.

DEPTH_STATS

Default: True

Scope: scrapy.spidermiddlewares.depth.DepthMiddleware

Whether to collect maximum depth stats.

DEPTH_STATS_VERBOSE

Default: False

Scope: scrapy.spidermiddlewares.depth.DepthMiddleware

Whether to collect verbose depth stats. If this is enabled, the number of requests for each depth is collected in the stats.

DNSCACHE_ENABLED

Default: True

Whether to enable DNS in-memory cache.

DNSCACHE_SIZE

Default: 10000

DNS in-memory cache size.

DNS_TIMEOUT

Default: 60

Timeout for processing of DNS queries in seconds. Float is supported.

DOWNLOADER

Default: 'scrapy.core.downloader.Downloader'

The downloader to use for crawling.

DOWNLOADER_HTTPCLIENTFACTORY

Default: 'scrapy.core.downloader.webclient.ScrapyHTTPClientFactory'

Defines a Twisted protocol.ClientFactory class to use for HTTP/1.0 connections (for HTTP10DownloadHandler).

Note

HTTP/1.0 is rarely used nowadays so you can safely ignore this setting, unless you use Twisted<11.1, or if you really want to use HTTP/1.0 and override DOWNLOAD_HANDLERS_BASE for http(s) scheme accordingly, i.e. to 'scrapy.core.downloader.handlers.http.HTTP10DownloadHandler'.

DOWNLOADER_CLIENTCONTEXTFACTORY

Default: 'scrapy.core.downloader.contextfactory.ScrapyClientContextFactory'

Represents the classpath to the ContextFactory to use.

Here, “ContextFactory” is a Twisted term for SSL/TLS contexts, defining the TLS/SSL protocol version to use, whether to do certificate verification, or even enable client-side authentication (and various other things).

Note

Scrapy default context factory does NOT perform remote server certificate verification. This is usually fine for web scraping.

If you do need remote server certificate verification enabled, Scrapy also has another context factory class that you can set, 'scrapy.core.downloader.contextfactory.BrowserLikeContextFactory', which uses the platform’s certificates to validate remote endpoints. This is only available if you use Twisted>=14.0.

If you do use a custom ContextFactory, make sure it accepts a method parameter at init (this is the OpenSSL.SSL method mapping DOWNLOADER_CLIENT_TLS_METHOD).

DOWNLOADER_CLIENT_TLS_METHOD

Default: 'TLS'

Use this setting to customize the TLS/SSL method used by the default HTTP/1.1 downloader.

This setting must be one of these string values:

  • 'TLS': maps to OpenSSL’s TLS_method() (a.k.a SSLv23_method()), which allows protocol negotiation, starting from the highest supported by the platform; default, recommended
  • 'TLSv1.0': this value forces HTTPS connections to use TLS version 1.0 ; set this if you want the behavior of Scrapy<1.1
  • 'TLSv1.1': forces TLS version 1.1
  • 'TLSv1.2': forces TLS version 1.2
  • 'SSLv3': forces SSL version 3 (not recommended)

Note

We recommend that you use PyOpenSSL>=0.13 and Twisted>=0.13 or above (Twisted>=14.0 if you can).

DOWNLOADER_MIDDLEWARES

Default:: {}

A dict containing the downloader middlewares enabled in your project, and their orders. For more info see Activating a downloader middleware.

DOWNLOADER_MIDDLEWARES_BASE

Default:

{
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.robotstxt.RobotsTxtMiddleware': 100,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.httpauth.HttpAuthMiddleware': 300,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.downloadtimeout.DownloadTimeoutMiddleware': 350,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.useragent.UserAgentMiddleware': 400,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.retry.RetryMiddleware': 500,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.defaultheaders.DefaultHeadersMiddleware': 550,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.ajaxcrawl.AjaxCrawlMiddleware': 560,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect.MetaRefreshMiddleware': 580,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.httpcompression.HttpCompressionMiddleware': 590,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect.RedirectMiddleware': 600,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.cookies.CookiesMiddleware': 700,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.httpproxy.HttpProxyMiddleware': 750,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.chunked.ChunkedTransferMiddleware': 830,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.stats.DownloaderStats': 850,
    'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.httpcache.HttpCacheMiddleware': 900,
}

A dict containing the downloader middlewares enabled by default in Scrapy. Low orders are closer to the engine, high orders are closer to the downloader. You should never modify this setting in your project, modify DOWNLOADER_MIDDLEWARES instead. For more info see Activating a downloader middleware.

DOWNLOADER_STATS

Default: True

Whether to enable downloader stats collection.

DOWNLOAD_DELAY

Default: 0

The amount of time (in secs) that the downloader should wait before downloading consecutive pages from the same website. This can be used to throttle the crawling speed to avoid hitting servers too hard. Decimal numbers are supported. Example:

DOWNLOAD_DELAY = 0.25    # 250 ms of delay

This setting is also affected by the RANDOMIZE_DOWNLOAD_DELAY setting (which is enabled by default). By default, Scrapy doesn’t wait a fixed amount of time between requests, but uses a random interval between 0.5 and 1.5 * DOWNLOAD_DELAY.

When CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_IP is non-zero, delays are enforced per ip address instead of per domain.

You can also change this setting per spider by setting download_delay spider attribute.

DOWNLOAD_HANDLERS

Default: {}

A dict containing the request downloader handlers enabled in your project. See DOWNLOAD_HANDLERS_BASE for example format.

DOWNLOAD_HANDLERS_BASE

Default:

{
    'file': 'scrapy.core.downloader.handlers.file.FileDownloadHandler',
    'http': 'scrapy.core.downloader.handlers.http.HTTPDownloadHandler',
    'https': 'scrapy.core.downloader.handlers.http.HTTPDownloadHandler',
    's3': 'scrapy.core.downloader.handlers.s3.S3DownloadHandler',
    'ftp': 'scrapy.core.downloader.handlers.ftp.FTPDownloadHandler',
}

A dict containing the request download handlers enabled by default in Scrapy. You should never modify this setting in your project, modify DOWNLOAD_HANDLERS instead.

You can disable any of these download handlers by assigning None to their URI scheme in DOWNLOAD_HANDLERS. E.g., to disable the built-in FTP handler (without replacement), place this in your settings.py:

DOWNLOAD_HANDLERS = {
    'ftp': None,
}

DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT

Default: 180

The amount of time (in secs) that the downloader will wait before timing out.

Note

This timeout can be set per spider using download_timeout spider attribute and per-request using download_timeout Request.meta key.

DOWNLOAD_MAXSIZE

Default: 1073741824 (1024MB)

The maximum response size (in bytes) that downloader will download.

If you want to disable it set to 0.

Note

This size can be set per spider using download_maxsize spider attribute and per-request using download_maxsize Request.meta key.

This feature needs Twisted >= 11.1.

DOWNLOAD_WARNSIZE

Default: 33554432 (32MB)

The response size (in bytes) that downloader will start to warn.

If you want to disable it set to 0.

Note

This size can be set per spider using download_warnsize spider attribute and per-request using download_warnsize Request.meta key.

This feature needs Twisted >= 11.1.

DUPEFILTER_CLASS

Default: 'scrapy.dupefilters.RFPDupeFilter'

The class used to detect and filter duplicate requests.

The default (RFPDupeFilter) filters based on request fingerprint using the scrapy.utils.request.request_fingerprint function. In order to change the way duplicates are checked you could subclass RFPDupeFilter and override its request_fingerprint method. This method should accept scrapy Request object and return its fingerprint (a string).

DUPEFILTER_DEBUG

Default: False

By default, RFPDupeFilter only logs the first duplicate request. Setting DUPEFILTER_DEBUG to True will make it log all duplicate requests.

EDITOR

Default: depends on the environment

The editor to use for editing spiders with the edit command. It defaults to the EDITOR environment variable, if set. Otherwise, it defaults to vi (on Unix systems) or the IDLE editor (on Windows).

EXTENSIONS

Default:: {}

A dict containing the extensions enabled in your project, and their orders.

EXTENSIONS_BASE

Default:

{
    'scrapy.extensions.corestats.CoreStats': 0,
    'scrapy.extensions.telnet.TelnetConsole': 0,
    'scrapy.extensions.memusage.MemoryUsage': 0,
    'scrapy.extensions.memdebug.MemoryDebugger': 0,
    'scrapy.extensions.closespider.CloseSpider': 0,
    'scrapy.extensions.feedexport.FeedExporter': 0,
    'scrapy.extensions.logstats.LogStats': 0,
    'scrapy.extensions.spiderstate.SpiderState': 0,
    'scrapy.extensions.throttle.AutoThrottle': 0,
}

A dict containing the extensions available by default in Scrapy, and their orders. This setting contains all stable built-in extensions. Keep in mind that some of them need to be enabled through a setting.

For more information See the extensions user guide and the list of available extensions.

FEED_TEMPDIR

The Feed Temp dir allows you to set a custom folder to save crawler temporary files before uploading with FTP feed storage and Amazon S3.

ITEM_PIPELINES

Default: {}

A dict containing the item pipelines to use, and their orders. Order values are arbitrary, but it is customary to define them in the 0-1000 range. Lower orders process before higher orders.

Example:

ITEM_PIPELINES = {
    'mybot.pipelines.validate.ValidateMyItem': 300,
    'mybot.pipelines.validate.StoreMyItem': 800,
}

ITEM_PIPELINES_BASE

Default: {}

A dict containing the pipelines enabled by default in Scrapy. You should never modify this setting in your project, modify ITEM_PIPELINES instead.

LOG_ENABLED

Default: True

Whether to enable logging.

LOG_ENCODING

Default: 'utf-8'

The encoding to use for logging.

LOG_FILE

Default: None

File name to use for logging output. If None, standard error will be used.

LOG_FORMAT

Default: '%(asctime)s [%(name)s] %(levelname)s: %(message)s'

String for formatting log messsages. Refer to the Python logging documentation for the whole list of available placeholders.

LOG_DATEFORMAT

Default: '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'

String for formatting date/time, expansion of the %(asctime)s placeholder in LOG_FORMAT. Refer to the Python datetime documentation for the whole list of available directives.

LOG_LEVEL

Default: 'DEBUG'

Minimum level to log. Available levels are: CRITICAL, ERROR, WARNING, INFO, DEBUG. For more info see Logging.

LOG_STDOUT

Default: False

If True, all standard output (and error) of your process will be redirected to the log. For example if you print 'hello' it will appear in the Scrapy log.

MEMDEBUG_ENABLED

Default: False

Whether to enable memory debugging.

MEMDEBUG_NOTIFY

Default: []

When memory debugging is enabled a memory report will be sent to the specified addresses if this setting is not empty, otherwise the report will be written to the log.

Example:

MEMDEBUG_NOTIFY = ['user@example.com']

MEMUSAGE_ENABLED

Default: False

Scope: scrapy.extensions.memusage

Whether to enable the memory usage extension that will shutdown the Scrapy process when it exceeds a memory limit, and also notify by email when that happened.

See Memory usage extension.

MEMUSAGE_LIMIT_MB

Default: 0

Scope: scrapy.extensions.memusage

The maximum amount of memory to allow (in megabytes) before shutting down Scrapy (if MEMUSAGE_ENABLED is True). If zero, no check will be performed.

See Memory usage extension.

MEMUSAGE_CHECK_INTERVAL_SECONDS

New in version 1.1.

Default: 60.0

Scope: scrapy.extensions.memusage

The Memory usage extension checks the current memory usage, versus the limits set by MEMUSAGE_LIMIT_MB and MEMUSAGE_WARNING_MB, at fixed time intervals.

This sets the length of these intervals, in seconds.

See Memory usage extension.

MEMUSAGE_NOTIFY_MAIL

Default: False

Scope: scrapy.extensions.memusage

A list of emails to notify if the memory limit has been reached.

Example:

MEMUSAGE_NOTIFY_MAIL = ['user@example.com']

See Memory usage extension.

MEMUSAGE_REPORT

Default: False

Scope: scrapy.extensions.memusage

Whether to send a memory usage report after each spider has been closed.

See Memory usage extension.

MEMUSAGE_WARNING_MB

Default: 0

Scope: scrapy.extensions.memusage

The maximum amount of memory to allow (in megabytes) before sending a warning email notifying about it. If zero, no warning will be produced.

NEWSPIDER_MODULE

Default: ''

Module where to create new spiders using the genspider command.

Example:

NEWSPIDER_MODULE = 'mybot.spiders_dev'

RANDOMIZE_DOWNLOAD_DELAY

Default: True

If enabled, Scrapy will wait a random amount of time (between 0.5 and 1.5 * DOWNLOAD_DELAY) while fetching requests from the same website.

This randomization decreases the chance of the crawler being detected (and subsequently blocked) by sites which analyze requests looking for statistically significant similarities in the time between their requests.

The randomization policy is the same used by wget --random-wait option.

If DOWNLOAD_DELAY is zero (default) this option has no effect.

REACTOR_THREADPOOL_MAXSIZE

Default: 10

The maximum limit for Twisted Reactor thread pool size. This is common multi-purpose thread pool used by various Scrapy components. Threaded DNS Resolver, BlockingFeedStorage, S3FilesStore just to name a few. Increase this value if you’re experiencing problems with insufficient blocking IO.

REDIRECT_MAX_TIMES

Default: 20

Defines the maximum times a request can be redirected. After this maximum the request’s response is returned as is. We used Firefox default value for the same task.

REDIRECT_PRIORITY_ADJUST

Default: +2

Scope: scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect.RedirectMiddleware

Adjust redirect request priority relative to original request:

  • a positive priority adjust (default) means higher priority.
  • a negative priority adjust means lower priority.

RETRY_PRIORITY_ADJUST

Default: -1

Scope: scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.retry.RetryMiddleware

Adjust retry request priority relative to original request:

  • a positive priority adjust means higher priority.
  • a negative priority adjust (default) means lower priority.

ROBOTSTXT_OBEY

Default: False

Scope: scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.robotstxt

If enabled, Scrapy will respect robots.txt policies. For more information see RobotsTxtMiddleware.

Note

While the default value is False for historical reasons, this option is enabled by default in settings.py file generated by scrapy startproject command.

SCHEDULER

Default: 'scrapy.core.scheduler.Scheduler'

The scheduler to use for crawling.

SPIDER_CONTRACTS

Default:: {}

A dict containing the spider contracts enabled in your project, used for testing spiders. For more info see Spiders Contracts.

SPIDER_CONTRACTS_BASE

Default:

{
    'scrapy.contracts.default.UrlContract' : 1,
    'scrapy.contracts.default.ReturnsContract': 2,
    'scrapy.contracts.default.ScrapesContract': 3,
}

A dict containing the scrapy contracts enabled by default in Scrapy. You should never modify this setting in your project, modify SPIDER_CONTRACTS instead. For more info see Spiders Contracts.

You can disable any of these contracts by assigning None to their class path in SPIDER_CONTRACTS. E.g., to disable the built-in ScrapesContract, place this in your settings.py:

SPIDER_CONTRACTS = {
    'scrapy.contracts.default.ScrapesContract': None,
}

SPIDER_LOADER_CLASS

Default: 'scrapy.spiderloader.SpiderLoader'

The class that will be used for loading spiders, which must implement the SpiderLoader API.

SPIDER_MIDDLEWARES

Default:: {}

A dict containing the spider middlewares enabled in your project, and their orders. For more info see Activating a spider middleware.

SPIDER_MIDDLEWARES_BASE

Default:

{
    'scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror.HttpErrorMiddleware': 50,
    'scrapy.spidermiddlewares.offsite.OffsiteMiddleware': 500,
    'scrapy.spidermiddlewares.referer.RefererMiddleware': 700,
    'scrapy.spidermiddlewares.urllength.UrlLengthMiddleware': 800,
    'scrapy.spidermiddlewares.depth.DepthMiddleware': 900,
}

A dict containing the spider middlewares enabled by default in Scrapy, and their orders. Low orders are closer to the engine, high orders are closer to the spider. For more info see Activating a spider middleware.

SPIDER_MODULES

Default: []

A list of modules where Scrapy will look for spiders.

Example:

SPIDER_MODULES = ['mybot.spiders_prod', 'mybot.spiders_dev']

STATS_CLASS

Default: 'scrapy.statscollectors.MemoryStatsCollector'

The class to use for collecting stats, who must implement the Stats Collector API.

STATS_DUMP

Default: True

Dump the Scrapy stats (to the Scrapy log) once the spider finishes.

For more info see: Stats Collection.

STATSMAILER_RCPTS

Default: [] (empty list)

Send Scrapy stats after spiders finish scraping. See StatsMailer for more info.

TELNETCONSOLE_ENABLED

Default: True

A boolean which specifies if the telnet console will be enabled (provided its extension is also enabled).

TELNETCONSOLE_PORT

Default: [6023, 6073]

The port range to use for the telnet console. If set to None or 0, a dynamically assigned port is used. For more info see Telnet Console.

TEMPLATES_DIR

Default: templates dir inside scrapy module

The directory where to look for templates when creating new projects with startproject command and new spiders with genspider command.

The project name must not conflict with the name of custom files or directories in the project subdirectory.

URLLENGTH_LIMIT

Default: 2083

Scope: spidermiddlewares.urllength

The maximum URL length to allow for crawled URLs. For more information about the default value for this setting see: http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/urllength.html

USER_AGENT

Default: "Scrapy/VERSION (+http://scrapy.org)"

The default User-Agent to use when crawling, unless overridden.