.. module:: scrapy.http :synopsis: Request and Response classes
Scrapy uses :class:`Request` and :class:`Response` objects for crawling web sites.
Typically, :class:`Request` objects are generated in the spiders and pass across the system until they reach the Downloader, which executes the request and returns a :class:`Response` object which travels back to the spider that issued the request.
Both :class:`Request` and :class:`Response` classes have subclasses which add functionality not required in the base classes. These are described below in :ref:`topics-request-response-ref-request-subclasses` and :ref:`topics-request-response-ref-response-subclasses`.
.. autoclass:: Request
A :class:`Request` object represents an HTTP request, which is usually
generated in the Spider and executed by the Downloader, and thus generating
a :class:`Response`.
:param url: the URL of this request
If the URL is invalid, a :exc:`ValueError` exception is raised.
:type url: str
:param callback: the function that will be called with the response of this
request (once it's downloaded) as its first parameter. For more information
see :ref:`topics-request-response-ref-request-callback-arguments` below.
If a Request doesn't specify a callback, the spider's
:meth:`~scrapy.spiders.Spider.parse` method will be used.
Note that if exceptions are raised during processing, errback is called instead.
:type callback: collections.abc.Callable
:param method: the HTTP method of this request. Defaults to ``'GET'``.
:type method: str
:param meta: the initial values for the :attr:`Request.meta` attribute. If
given, the dict passed in this parameter will be shallow copied.
:type meta: dict
:param body: the request body. If a string is passed, then it's encoded as
bytes using the ``encoding`` passed (which defaults to ``utf-8``). If
``body`` is not given, an empty bytes object is stored. Regardless of the
type of this argument, the final value stored will be a bytes object
(never a string or ``None``).
:type body: bytes or str
:param headers: the headers of this request. The dict values can be strings
(for single valued headers) or lists (for multi-valued headers). If
``None`` is passed as value, the HTTP header will not be sent at all.
.. caution:: Cookies set via the ``Cookie`` header are not considered by the
:ref:`cookies-mw`. If you need to set cookies for a request, use the
:class:`Request.cookies <scrapy.http.Request>` parameter. This is a known
current limitation that is being worked on.
:type headers: dict
:param cookies: the request cookies. These can be sent in two forms.
1. Using a dict::
request_with_cookies = Request(url="http://www.example.com",
cookies={'currency': 'USD', 'country': 'UY'})
2. Using a list of dicts::
request_with_cookies = Request(url="http://www.example.com",
cookies=[{'name': 'currency',
'value': 'USD',
'domain': 'example.com',
'path': '/currency'}])
The latter form allows for customizing the ``domain`` and ``path``
attributes of the cookie. This is only useful if the cookies are saved
for later requests.
.. reqmeta:: dont_merge_cookies
When some site returns cookies (in a response) those are stored in the
cookies for that domain and will be sent again in future requests.
That's the typical behaviour of any regular web browser.
To create a request that does not send stored cookies and does not
store received cookies, set the ``dont_merge_cookies`` key to ``True``
in :attr:`request.meta <scrapy.http.Request.meta>`.
Example of a request that sends manually-defined cookies and ignores
cookie storage::
Request(
url="http://www.example.com",
cookies={'currency': 'USD', 'country': 'UY'},
meta={'dont_merge_cookies': True},
)
For more info see :ref:`cookies-mw`.
.. caution:: Cookies set via the ``Cookie`` header are not considered by the
:ref:`cookies-mw`. If you need to set cookies for a request, use the
:class:`Request.cookies <scrapy.http.Request>` parameter. This is a known
current limitation that is being worked on.
:type cookies: dict or list
:param encoding: the encoding of this request (defaults to ``'utf-8'``).
This encoding will be used to percent-encode the URL and to convert the
body to bytes (if given as a string).
:type encoding: str
:param priority: the priority of this request (defaults to ``0``).
The priority is used by the scheduler to define the order used to process
requests. Requests with a higher priority value will execute earlier.
Negative values are allowed in order to indicate relatively low-priority.
:type priority: int
:param dont_filter: indicates that this request should not be filtered by
the scheduler. This is used when you want to perform an identical
request multiple times, to ignore the duplicates filter. Use it with
care, or you will get into crawling loops. Default to ``False``.
:type dont_filter: bool
:param errback: a function that will be called if any exception was
raised while processing the request. This includes pages that failed
with 404 HTTP errors and such. It receives a
:exc:`~twisted.python.failure.Failure` as first parameter.
For more information,
see :ref:`topics-request-response-ref-errbacks` below.
.. versionchanged:: 2.0
The *callback* parameter is no longer required when the *errback*
parameter is specified.
:type errback: collections.abc.Callable
:param flags: Flags sent to the request, can be used for logging or similar purposes.
:type flags: list
:param cb_kwargs: A dict with arbitrary data that will be passed as keyword arguments to the Request's callback.
:type cb_kwargs: dict
.. attribute:: Request.url
A string containing the URL of this request. Keep in mind that this
attribute contains the escaped URL, so it can differ from the URL passed in
the ``__init__`` method.
This attribute is read-only. To change the URL of a Request use
:meth:`replace`.
.. attribute:: Request.method
A string representing the HTTP method in the request. This is guaranteed to
be uppercase. Example: ``"GET"``, ``"POST"``, ``"PUT"``, etc
.. attribute:: Request.headers
A dictionary-like object which contains the request headers.
.. attribute:: Request.body
The request body as bytes.
This attribute is read-only. To change the body of a Request use
:meth:`replace`.
.. attribute:: Request.meta
A dict that contains arbitrary metadata for this request. This dict is
empty for new Requests, and is usually populated by different Scrapy
components (extensions, middlewares, etc). So the data contained in this
dict depends on the extensions you have enabled.
See :ref:`topics-request-meta` for a list of special meta keys
recognized by Scrapy.
This dict is :doc:`shallow copied <library/copy>` when the request is
cloned using the ``copy()`` or ``replace()`` methods, and can also be
accessed, in your spider, from the ``response.meta`` attribute.
.. attribute:: Request.cb_kwargs
A dictionary that contains arbitrary metadata for this request. Its contents
will be passed to the Request's callback as keyword arguments. It is empty
for new Requests, which means by default callbacks only get a :class:`Response`
object as argument.
This dict is :doc:`shallow copied <library/copy>` when the request is
cloned using the ``copy()`` or ``replace()`` methods, and can also be
accessed, in your spider, from the ``response.cb_kwargs`` attribute.
In case of a failure to process the request, this dict can be accessed as
``failure.request.cb_kwargs`` in the request's errback. For more information,
see :ref:`errback-cb_kwargs`.
.. attribute:: Request.attributes
A tuple of :class:`str` objects containing all public attribute names (and ``__init__`` parameters)
for the class. Currently used by :meth:`Request.replace`, :meth:`Request.to_dict` and
:func:`~scrapy.utils.request.request_from_dict`.
.. method:: Request.copy()
Return a new Request which is a copy of this Request. See also:
:ref:`topics-request-response-ref-request-callback-arguments`.
.. method:: Request.replace([url, method, headers, body, cookies, meta, flags, encoding, priority, dont_filter, callback, errback, cb_kwargs])
Return a Request object with the same members, except for those members
given new values by whichever keyword arguments are specified. The
:attr:`Request.cb_kwargs` and :attr:`Request.meta` attributes are shallow
copied by default (unless new values are given as arguments). See also
:ref:`topics-request-response-ref-request-callback-arguments`.
.. automethod:: from_curl
.. automethod:: to_dict
The callback of a request is a function that will be called when the response of that request is downloaded. The callback function will be called with the downloaded :class:`Response` object as its first argument.
Example:
def parse_page1(self, response):
return scrapy.Request("http://www.example.com/some_page.html",
callback=self.parse_page2)
def parse_page2(self, response):
# this would log http://www.example.com/some_page.html
self.logger.info("Visited %s", response.url)
In some cases you may be interested in passing arguments to those callback functions so you can receive the arguments later, in the second callback. The following example shows how to achieve this by using the :attr:`Request.cb_kwargs` attribute:
def parse(self, response):
request = scrapy.Request('http://www.example.com/index.html',
callback=self.parse_page2,
cb_kwargs=dict(main_url=response.url))
request.cb_kwargs['foo'] = 'bar' # add more arguments for the callback
yield request
def parse_page2(self, response, main_url, foo):
yield dict(
main_url=main_url,
other_url=response.url,
foo=foo,
)
Caution!
:attr:`Request.cb_kwargs` was introduced in version 1.7.
Prior to that, using :attr:`Request.meta` was recommended for passing
information around callbacks. After 1.7, :attr:`Request.cb_kwargs`
became the preferred way for handling user information, leaving :attr:`Request.meta`
for communication with components like middlewares and extensions.
The errback of a request is a function that will be called when an exception is raise while processing it.
It receives a :exc:`~twisted.python.failure.Failure` as first parameter and can be used to track connection establishment timeouts, DNS errors etc.
Here's an example spider logging all errors and catching some specific errors if needed:
import scrapy
from scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror import HttpError
from twisted.internet.error import DNSLookupError
from twisted.internet.error import TimeoutError, TCPTimedOutError
class ErrbackSpider(scrapy.Spider):
name = "errback_example"
start_urls = [
"http://www.httpbin.org/", # HTTP 200 expected
"http://www.httpbin.org/status/404", # Not found error
"http://www.httpbin.org/status/500", # server issue
"http://www.httpbin.org:12345/", # non-responding host, timeout expected
"http://www.httphttpbinbin.org/", # DNS error expected
]
def start_requests(self):
for u in self.start_urls:
yield scrapy.Request(u, callback=self.parse_httpbin,
errback=self.errback_httpbin,
dont_filter=True)
def parse_httpbin(self, response):
self.logger.info('Got successful response from {}'.format(response.url))
# do something useful here...
def errback_httpbin(self, failure):
# log all failures
self.logger.error(repr(failure))
# in case you want to do something special for some errors,
# you may need the failure's type:
if failure.check(HttpError):
# these exceptions come from HttpError spider middleware
# you can get the non-200 response
response = failure.value.response
self.logger.error('HttpError on %s', response.url)
elif failure.check(DNSLookupError):
# this is the original request
request = failure.request
self.logger.error('DNSLookupError on %s', request.url)
elif failure.check(TimeoutError, TCPTimedOutError):
request = failure.request
self.logger.error('TimeoutError on %s', request.url)
In case of a failure to process the request, you may be interested in
accessing arguments to the callback functions so you can process further
based on the arguments in the errback. The following example shows how to
achieve this by using Failure.request.cb_kwargs:
def parse(self, response):
request = scrapy.Request('http://www.example.com/index.html',
callback=self.parse_page2,
errback=self.errback_page2,
cb_kwargs=dict(main_url=response.url))
yield request
def parse_page2(self, response, main_url):
pass
def errback_page2(self, failure):
yield dict(
main_url=failure.request.cb_kwargs['main_url'],
)
The :attr:`Request.meta` attribute can contain any arbitrary data, but there are some special keys recognized by Scrapy and its built-in extensions.
Those are:
- :reqmeta:`bindaddress`
- :reqmeta:`cookiejar`
- :reqmeta:`dont_cache`
- :reqmeta:`dont_merge_cookies`
- :reqmeta:`dont_obey_robotstxt`
- :reqmeta:`dont_redirect`
- :reqmeta:`dont_retry`
- :reqmeta:`download_fail_on_dataloss`
- :reqmeta:`download_latency`
- :reqmeta:`download_maxsize`
- :reqmeta:`download_timeout`
ftp_password(See :setting:`FTP_PASSWORD` for more info)ftp_user(See :setting:`FTP_USER` for more info)- :reqmeta:`handle_httpstatus_all`
- :reqmeta:`handle_httpstatus_list`
- :reqmeta:`max_retry_times`
- :reqmeta:`proxy`
- :reqmeta:`redirect_reasons`
- :reqmeta:`redirect_urls`
- :reqmeta:`referrer_policy`
.. reqmeta:: bindaddress
The IP of the outgoing IP address to use for the performing the request.
.. reqmeta:: download_timeout
The amount of time (in secs) that the downloader will wait before timing out. See also: :setting:`DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT`.
.. reqmeta:: download_latency
The amount of time spent to fetch the response, since the request has been started, i.e. HTTP message sent over the network. This meta key only becomes available when the response has been downloaded. While most other meta keys are used to control Scrapy behavior, this one is supposed to be read-only.
.. reqmeta:: download_fail_on_dataloss
Whether or not to fail on broken responses. See: :setting:`DOWNLOAD_FAIL_ON_DATALOSS`.
.. reqmeta:: max_retry_times
The meta key is used set retry times per request. When initialized, the :reqmeta:`max_retry_times` meta key takes higher precedence over the :setting:`RETRY_TIMES` setting.
Raising a :exc:`~scrapy.exceptions.StopDownload` exception from a handler for the :class:`~scrapy.signals.bytes_received` or :class:`~scrapy.signals.headers_received` signals will stop the download of a given response. See the following example:
import scrapy
class StopSpider(scrapy.Spider):
name = "stop"
start_urls = ["https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/"]
@classmethod
def from_crawler(cls, crawler):
spider = super().from_crawler(crawler)
crawler.signals.connect(spider.on_bytes_received, signal=scrapy.signals.bytes_received)
return spider
def parse(self, response):
# 'last_chars' show that the full response was not downloaded
yield {"len": len(response.text), "last_chars": response.text[-40:]}
def on_bytes_received(self, data, request, spider):
raise scrapy.exceptions.StopDownload(fail=False)
which produces the following output:
2020-05-19 17:26:12 [scrapy.core.engine] INFO: Spider opened
2020-05-19 17:26:12 [scrapy.extensions.logstats] INFO: Crawled 0 pages (at 0 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
2020-05-19 17:26:13 [scrapy.core.downloader.handlers.http11] DEBUG: Download stopped for <GET https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/> from signal handler StopSpider.on_bytes_received
2020-05-19 17:26:13 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/> (referer: None) ['download_stopped']
2020-05-19 17:26:13 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/>
{'len': 279, 'last_chars': 'dth, initial-scale=1.0">\n \n <title>Scr'}
2020-05-19 17:26:13 [scrapy.core.engine] INFO: Closing spider (finished)
By default, resulting responses are handled by their corresponding errbacks. To
call their callback instead, like in this example, pass fail=False to the
:exc:`~scrapy.exceptions.StopDownload` exception.
Here is the list of built-in :class:`Request` subclasses. You can also subclass it to implement your own custom functionality.
The FormRequest class extends the base :class:`Request` with functionality for dealing with HTML forms. It uses lxml.html forms to pre-populate form fields with form data from :class:`Response` objects.
If you want to simulate a HTML Form POST in your spider and send a couple of key-value fields, you can return a :class:`FormRequest` object (from your spider) like this:
return [FormRequest(url="http://www.example.com/post/action",
formdata={'name': 'John Doe', 'age': '27'},
callback=self.after_post)]
It is usual for web sites to provide pre-populated form fields through <input
type="hidden"> elements, such as session related data or authentication
tokens (for login pages). When scraping, you'll want these fields to be
automatically pre-populated and only override a couple of them, such as the
user name and password. You can use the :meth:`FormRequest.from_response`
method for this job. Here's an example spider which uses it:
import scrapy
def authentication_failed(response):
# TODO: Check the contents of the response and return True if it failed
# or False if it succeeded.
pass
class LoginSpider(scrapy.Spider):
name = 'example.com'
start_urls = ['http://www.example.com/users/login.php']
def parse(self, response):
return scrapy.FormRequest.from_response(
response,
formdata={'username': 'john', 'password': 'secret'},
callback=self.after_login
)
def after_login(self, response):
if authentication_failed(response):
self.logger.error("Login failed")
return
# continue scraping with authenticated session...
The JsonRequest class extends the base :class:`Request` class with functionality for dealing with JSON requests.
Sending a JSON POST request with a JSON payload:
data = {
'name1': 'value1',
'name2': 'value2',
}
yield JsonRequest(url='http://www.example.com/post/action', data=data)
.. autofunction:: scrapy.utils.request.request_from_dict
.. autoclass:: Response
A :class:`Response` object represents an HTTP response, which is usually
downloaded (by the Downloader) and fed to the Spiders for processing.
:param url: the URL of this response
:type url: str
:param status: the HTTP status of the response. Defaults to ``200``.
:type status: int
:param headers: the headers of this response. The dict values can be strings
(for single valued headers) or lists (for multi-valued headers).
:type headers: dict
:param body: the response body. To access the decoded text as a string, use
``response.text`` from an encoding-aware
:ref:`Response subclass <topics-request-response-ref-response-subclasses>`,
such as :class:`TextResponse`.
:type body: bytes
:param flags: is a list containing the initial values for the
:attr:`Response.flags` attribute. If given, the list will be shallow
copied.
:type flags: list
:param request: the initial value of the :attr:`Response.request` attribute.
This represents the :class:`Request` that generated this response.
:type request: scrapy.http.Request
:param certificate: an object representing the server's SSL certificate.
:type certificate: twisted.internet.ssl.Certificate
:param ip_address: The IP address of the server from which the Response originated.
:type ip_address: :class:`ipaddress.IPv4Address` or :class:`ipaddress.IPv6Address`
:param protocol: The protocol that was used to download the response.
For instance: "HTTP/1.0", "HTTP/1.1", "h2"
:type protocol: :class:`str`
.. versionadded:: 2.0.0
The ``certificate`` parameter.
.. versionadded:: 2.1.0
The ``ip_address`` parameter.
.. versionadded:: 2.5.0
The ``protocol`` parameter.
.. attribute:: Response.url
A string containing the URL of the response.
This attribute is read-only. To change the URL of a Response use
:meth:`replace`.
.. attribute:: Response.status
An integer representing the HTTP status of the response. Example: ``200``,
``404``.
.. attribute:: Response.headers
A dictionary-like object which contains the response headers. Values can
be accessed using :meth:`get` to return the first header value with the
specified name or :meth:`getlist` to return all header values with the
specified name. For example, this call will give you all cookies in the
headers::
response.headers.getlist('Set-Cookie')
.. attribute:: Response.body
The response body as bytes.
If you want the body as a string, use :attr:`TextResponse.text` (only
available in :class:`TextResponse` and subclasses).
This attribute is read-only. To change the body of a Response use
:meth:`replace`.
.. attribute:: Response.request
The :class:`Request` object that generated this response. This attribute is
assigned in the Scrapy engine, after the response and the request have passed
through all :ref:`Downloader Middlewares <topics-downloader-middleware>`.
In particular, this means that:
- HTTP redirections will cause the original request (to the URL before
redirection) to be assigned to the redirected response (with the final
URL after redirection).
- Response.request.url doesn't always equal Response.url
- This attribute is only available in the spider code, and in the
:ref:`Spider Middlewares <topics-spider-middleware>`, but not in
Downloader Middlewares (although you have the Request available there by
other means) and handlers of the :signal:`response_downloaded` signal.
.. attribute:: Response.meta
A shortcut to the :attr:`Request.meta` attribute of the
:attr:`Response.request` object (i.e. ``self.request.meta``).
Unlike the :attr:`Response.request` attribute, the :attr:`Response.meta`
attribute is propagated along redirects and retries, so you will get
the original :attr:`Request.meta` sent from your spider.
.. seealso:: :attr:`Request.meta` attribute
.. attribute:: Response.cb_kwargs
.. versionadded:: 2.0
A shortcut to the :attr:`Request.cb_kwargs` attribute of the
:attr:`Response.request` object (i.e. ``self.request.cb_kwargs``).
Unlike the :attr:`Response.request` attribute, the
:attr:`Response.cb_kwargs` attribute is propagated along redirects and
retries, so you will get the original :attr:`Request.cb_kwargs` sent
from your spider.
.. seealso:: :attr:`Request.cb_kwargs` attribute
.. attribute:: Response.flags
A list that contains flags for this response. Flags are labels used for
tagging Responses. For example: ``'cached'``, ``'redirected``', etc. And
they're shown on the string representation of the Response (`__str__`
method) which is used by the engine for logging.
.. attribute:: Response.certificate
.. versionadded:: 2.0.0
A :class:`twisted.internet.ssl.Certificate` object representing
the server's SSL certificate.
Only populated for ``https`` responses, ``None`` otherwise.
.. attribute:: Response.ip_address
.. versionadded:: 2.1.0
The IP address of the server from which the Response originated.
This attribute is currently only populated by the HTTP 1.1 download
handler, i.e. for ``http(s)`` responses. For other handlers,
:attr:`ip_address` is always ``None``.
.. attribute:: Response.protocol
.. versionadded:: 2.5.0
The protocol that was used to download the response.
For instance: "HTTP/1.0", "HTTP/1.1"
This attribute is currently only populated by the HTTP download
handlers, i.e. for ``http(s)`` responses. For other handlers,
:attr:`protocol` is always ``None``.
.. attribute:: Response.attributes
A tuple of :class:`str` objects containing all public attribute names (and ``__init__`` parameters)
for the class. Currently used by :meth:`Response.replace`, :meth:`Response.to_dict` and
:func:`~scrapy.utils.response.response_from_dict`.
.. method:: Response.copy()
Returns a new Response which is a copy of this Response.
.. method:: Response.replace([url, status, headers, body, request, flags, cls])
Returns a Response object with the same members, except for those members
given new values by whichever keyword arguments are specified. The
attribute :attr:`Response.meta` is copied by default.
.. method:: Response.urljoin(url)
Constructs an absolute url by combining the Response's :attr:`url` with
a possible relative url.
This is a wrapper over :func:`~urllib.parse.urljoin`, it's merely an alias for
making this call::
urllib.parse.urljoin(response.url, url)
.. automethod:: Response.follow
.. automethod:: Response.follow_all
.. automethod:: Response.to_dict
Here is the list of available built-in Response subclasses. You can also subclass the Response class to implement your own functionality.
.. autofunction:: scrapy.utils.response.response_from_dict