Telnet Console

Scrapy comes with a built-in telnet console for inspecting and controlling a Scrapy running process. The telnet console is just a regular python shell running inside the Scrapy process, so you can do literally anything from it.

The telnet console is a built-in Scrapy extension which comes enabled by default, but you can also disable it if you want. For more information about the extension itself see Telnet console extension.

How to access the telnet console

The telnet console listens in the TCP port defined in the TELNETCONSOLE_PORT setting, which defaults to 6023. To access the console you need to type:

telnet localhost 6023
>>>

You need the telnet program which comes installed by default in Windows, and most Linux distros.

Available variables in the telnet console

The telnet console is like a regular Python shell running inside the Scrapy process, so you can do anything from it including importing new modules, etc.

However, the telnet console comes with some default variables defined for convenience:

Shortcut	Description
engine	the Scrapy engine object (scrapy.core.engine.scrapyengine)
manager	the Scrapy manager object (scrapy.core.manager.scrapymanager)
extensions	the extensions object (scrapy.extension.extensions)
stats	the Scrapy stats object (scrapy.stats.stats)
settings	the Scrapy settings object (scrapy.conf.settings)
est	print a report of the current engine status
prefs	for memory debugging (see Debugging memory leaks)
p	a shortcut to the pprint.pprint function
hpy	for memory debugging (see Debugging memory leaks)

Some example of using the telnet console

Here are some example tasks you can do with the telnet console:

View engine status

You can use the st() method of the Scrapy engine to quickly show its state using the telnet console:

telnet localhost 6023
>>> est()
Execution engine status

datetime.now()-self.start_time                  : 0:00:09.051588
self.is_idle()                                  : False
self.scheduler.is_idle()                        : False
len(self.scheduler.pending_requests)            : 1
self.downloader.is_idle()                       : False
len(self.downloader.sites)                      : 1
self.downloader.has_capacity()                  : True
self.pipeline.is_idle()                         : False
len(self.pipeline.domaininfo)                   : 1
len(self._scraping)                             : 1

example.com
  self.domain_is_idle(domain)                        : False
  self.closing.get(domain)                           : None
  self.scheduler.domain_has_pending_requests(domain) : True
  len(self.scheduler.pending_requests[domain])       : 97
  len(self.downloader.sites[domain].queue)           : 17
  len(self.downloader.sites[domain].active)          : 25
  len(self.downloader.sites[domain].transferring)    : 8
  self.downloader.sites[domain].closing              : False
  self.downloader.sites[domain].lastseen             : 2009-06-23 15:20:16.563675
  self.pipeline.domain_is_idle(domain)               : True
  len(self.pipeline.domaininfo[domain])              : 0
  len(self._scraping[domain])                        : 0

Pause, resume and stop Scrapy engine

To pause:

telnet localhost 6023
>>> engine.pause()
>>>

To resume:

telnet localhost 6023
>>> engine.unpause()
>>>

To stop:

telnet localhost 6023
>>> engine.stop()
Connection closed by foreign host.

Telnet Console signals

scrapy.management.telnet.update_telnet_vars(telnet_vars)

Sent just before the telnet console is opened. You can hook up to this signal to add, remove or update the variables that will be available in the telnet local namespace. In order to do that, you need to update the telnet_vars dict in your handler.

Parameters:telnet_vars (dict) – the dict of telnet variables