Scrapy crawler in Cron job

Question

I want to execute my scrapy crawler from cron job .

i create bash file getdata.sh where scrapy project is located with it's spiders

#!/bin/bash
cd /myfolder/crawlers/
scrapy crawl my_spider_name

My crontab looks like this , I want to execute it in every 5 minute

 */5 * * * * sh /myfolder/crawlers/getdata.sh 

but it don't works , whats wrong , where is my error ?

when I execute my bash file from terminal sh /myfolder/crawlers/getdata.sh it works fine

Solution 1

I solved this problem including PATH into bash file

#!/bin/bash

cd /myfolder/crawlers/
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
export PATH
scrapy crawl my_spider_name

Solution 2

Adding the following lines in crontab -e runs my scrapy crawl at 5AM every day. This is a slightly modified version of crocs' answer

PATH=/usr/bin
* 5 * * * cd project_folder/project_name/ && scrapy crawl spider_name

Without setting $PATH, cron would give me an error "command not found: scrapy". I guess this is because /usr/bin is where scripts to run programs are stored in Ubuntu.

Note that the complete path for my scrapy project is /home/user/project_folder/project_name. I ran the env command in cron and noticed that the working directory is /home/user. Hence I skipped /home/user in my crontab above

The cron log can be helpful while debugging

grep CRON /var/log/syslog

Solution 3

For anyone who used pip3 (or similar) to install scrapy, here is a simple inline solution:

*/10 * * * * cd ~/project/path && ~/.local/bin/scrapy crawl something >> ~/crawl.log 2>&1

Replace:

*/10 * * * * with your cron pattern

~/project/path with the path to your scrapy project (where your scrapy.cfg is)

something with the spider name (use scrapy list in your project to find out)

~/crawl.log with your log file position (in case you want to have logging)

Solution 4

Another option is to forget using a shell script and chain the two commands together directly in the cronjob. Just make sure the PATH variable is set before the first scrapy cronjob in the crontab list. Run:

    crontab -e 

to edit and have a look. I have several scrapy crawlers which run at various times. Some every 5 mins, others twice a day.

    PATH=/usr/local/bin
    */5 * * * * user cd /myfolder/crawlers/ && scrapy crawl my_spider_name_1
    * 1,13 * * * user cd /myfolder/crawlers/ && scrapy crawl my_spider_name_2

All jobs located after the PATH variable will find scrapy. Here the first one will run every 5 mins and the 2nd twice a day at 1am and 1pm. I found this easier to manage. If you have other binaries to run then you may need to add their locations to the path.

Solution 5

Check where scrapy is installed using "which scrapy" command. In my case, scrapy is installed in /usr/local/bin.

Open crontab for editing using crontab -e. PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin export PATH */5 * * * * cd /myfolder/path && scrapy crawl spider_name

It should work. Scrapy runs every 5 minutes.

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