Hey everyone! I’m using Scrapy with the scrapy-playwright plugin to scrape a website. I’ve set headless mode to False, but I’m having trouble keeping the browser window open after the scraping is done.
I want to check the webpage after some actions are performed, but the browser keeps closing automatically. Is there a setting or trick to keep it open? I’ve looked through the docs but can’t seem to find anything about this.
Any help would be awesome! Thanks in advance!
Here’s a simplified version of what I’m working with:
import scrapy
from scrapy_playwright.page import PageMethod
class MySpider(scrapy.Spider):
name = 'keep_open_spider'
def start_requests(self):
yield scrapy.Request(
'https://example.com',
meta=dict(
playwright=True,
playwright_include_page=True,
playwright_page_methods=[
PageMethod('wait_for_selector', 'body'),
]
)
)
def parse(self, response):
# Scraping logic here
pass
How can I modify this to keep the browser open after scraping?
I’ve faced this issue before, and I found a workaround that might help you out. Instead of relying on Scrapy to manage the browser lifecycle, you can take control of it yourself using the Playwright API directly.
Here’s what I did:
Initialize the Playwright browser outside of your spider.
Pass the browser instance to your spider.
Use the browser instance in your requests instead of letting Scrapy create a new one each time.
Keep the browser open after the crawl is finished.
You’ll need to modify your spider and add some code to your script. It’s a bit more complex, but it gives you full control over the browser. Here’s a rough outline:
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
def run_spider():
with sync_playwright() as p:
browser = p.chromium.launch(headless=False)
# Run your spider here, passing the browser instance
# ...
input('Press Enter to close the browser...')
browser.close()
if __name__ == '__main__':
run_spider()
This approach keeps the browser open until you’re ready to close it. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it works for debugging purposes. Just remember to close the browser manually when you’re done!
I’ve encountered a similar challenge and found a solution that might work for you. Instead of relying on Scrapy’s default behavior, you can use the Playwright context manager to keep the browser open. Here’s how:
Modify your spider to use a custom context manager.
Create a method to handle the browser closing.
Use a signal to trigger the browser closure.
Here’s a basic implementation:
from scrapy import signals
from contextlib import contextmanager
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
class MySpider(scrapy.Spider):
name = 'keep_open_spider'
@contextmanager
def playwright_page(self):
with sync_playwright() as p:
browser = p.chromium.launch(headless=False)
page = browser.new_page()
try:
yield page
finally:
input('Press Enter to close the browser...')
browser.close()
@classmethod
def from_crawler(cls, crawler, *args, **kwargs):
spider = super().from_crawler(crawler, *args, **kwargs)
crawler.signals.connect(spider.spider_closed, signal=signals.spider_closed)
return spider
def spider_closed(self, spider):
self.playwright_page().__exit__(None, None, None)
# Rest of your spider code...
This approach gives you more control and keeps the browser open until you’re ready to close it.