How to install scrapy on Ubuntu

scrapy is a Python-based scraping and web crawling program and is generally available as a pip package. Some Linux distributions like Ubuntu however have Scrapy in its default package repository and can be installed via apt.

Ubuntu version of scrapy is more tightly integrated with the operating system in a way that it installs to the default application path and you don't need to install additional tools such as pip just to have scrapy installed.

The installed version is however normally tied to the Ubuntu version so you won't get the latest version of scrapy unless you also upgrade your Ubuntu version.

scrapy can be installed on Ubuntu using apt at the terminal.

Steps to install scrapy on Ubuntu:

1. Launch terminal application.
2. Update apt's package list from repository.

   $ sudo apt update
   [sudo] password for user:
   Hit:1 http://jp.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan InRelease
   Hit:2 http://jp.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan-updates InRelease
   Hit:3 http://jp.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan-backports InRelease
   Hit:4 http://jp.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan-security InRelease
   Reading package lists... Done
   Building dependency tree
   Reading state information... Done
   All packages are up to date.

3. Install python3-scrapy package using apt.

   $ sudo apt install --assume-yes python3-scrapy
   Reading package lists... Done
   Building dependency tree
   Reading state information... Done
   The following additional packages will be installed:
     ipython3 libimagequant0 libjbig0 libjpeg-turbo8 libjpeg8 liblcms2-2
     libmysqlclient21 libtiff5 libwebp6 libwebpdemux2 libwebpmux3 mysql-common
     python3-boto python3-bs4 python3-cssselect python3-decorator
     python3-html5lib python3-ipython python3-ipython-genutils python3-libxml2
     python3-lxml python3-mysqldb python3-olefile python3-parsel python3-pexpect
     python3-pickleshare python3-pil python3-prompt-toolkit python3-ptyprocess
     python3-pydispatch python3-pygments python3-queuelib python3-simplegeneric
     python3-soupsieve python3-traitlets python3-w3lib python3-wcwidth
     python3-webencodings
   Suggested packages:
     liblcms2-utils python3-genshi python3-lxml-dbg python-lxml-doc
     default-mysql-server | virtual-mysql-server python-egenix-mxdatetime
     python3-mysqldb-dbg python-pexpect-doc python-pil-doc python3-pil-dbg
     python-pydispatch-doc python-pygments-doc ttf-bitstream-vera
     python-scrapy-doc
   ##### snipped

4. Start using scrapy by running scrapy command at the terminal.

   $ scrapy
   Scrapy 1.7.3 - no active project
   
   Usage:
     scrapy <command> [options] [args]
   
   Available commands:
     bench         Run quick benchmark test
     fetch         Fetch a URL using the Scrapy downloader
     genspider     Generate new spider using pre-defined templates
     runspider     Run a self-contained spider (without creating a project)
     settings      Get settings values
     shell         Interactive scraping console
     startproject  Create new project
     version       Print Scrapy version
     view          Open URL in browser, as seen by Scrapy
   
     [ more ]      More commands available when run from project directory
   
   Use "scrapy <command> -h" to see more info about a command