Add docs about running Scrapy from apps and notebooks. (#7751)

docs/topics/asyncio.rst

@@ -150,6 +150,12 @@ Using Scrapy without a Twisted reactor
 .. warning::
     This is currently experimental and may not be suitable for production use.
 
+.. note:: As the Twisted download handlers cannot be used without a reactor,
+    the default download handler in this mode is
+    :class:`~scrapy.core.downloader.handlers._httpx.HttpxDownloadHandler`. You
+    will need to additionally install the ``httpx`` library to use it, unless
+    you switch to some different handler.
+
 It's possible to use Scrapy without installing a Twisted reactor at all, by
 setting the :setting:`TWISTED_REACTOR_ENABLED` setting to ``False``. In this
 mode Scrapy will use the asyncio event loop directly, and most of the Scrapy

docs/topics/practices.rst

@@ -247,6 +247,110 @@ Using :func:`asyncio.run` with :class:`~scrapy.crawler.AsyncCrawlerRunner`:
 
     asyncio.run(main())
 
+.. _run-spiders-in-apps:
+
+Running spiders inside existing applications
+============================================
+
+You may want to run Scrapy spiders inside an existing application. In simple
+cases (e.g. task queues that spawn a process for every task, or applications
+that can execute tasks synchronously in the same process) you can use the same
+approach as for standalone scripts (see :ref:`run-from-script`). More complex
+cases, e.g. asynchronous web applications, have additional caveats and
+limitations.
+
+If the application runs its own Twisted reactor, you can use
+:class:`~scrapy.crawler.AsyncCrawlerRunner` or
+:class:`~scrapy.crawler.CrawlerRunner` to run spiders using this reactor, see
+:ref:`run-from-script` for examples.
+
+If the application doesn't run a Twisted reactor or an asyncio event loop (for
+example, a Django web app deployed with a WSGI server such as uWSGI), you can
+use :class:`~scrapy.crawler.AsyncCrawlerProcess` with
+:setting:`TWISTED_REACTOR_ENABLED` set to ``False``, so that Scrapy starts and
+stops an asyncio event loop for every spider run:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    import scrapy
+    from django.http import HttpResponse
+    from scrapy.crawler import AsyncCrawlerProcess
+
+
+    class MySpider(scrapy.Spider):
+        # Your spider definition
+        ...
+
+
+    def crawl_view(request):
+        process = AsyncCrawlerProcess(settings={"TWISTED_REACTOR_ENABLED": False})
+        process.crawl(MySpider)
+        process.start()  # returns when the spider finishes
+        return HttpResponse("Crawling finished")
+
+If the application runs its own asyncio event loop (for example, a Django web
+app deployed with an ASGI server such as uvicorn), you can use
+:class:`~scrapy.crawler.AsyncCrawlerRunner` with
+:setting:`TWISTED_REACTOR_ENABLED` set to ``False``, so that Scrapy uses the
+existing event loop:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    import scrapy
+    from django.http import HttpResponse
+    from scrapy.crawler import AsyncCrawlerRunner
+
+
+    class MySpider(scrapy.Spider):
+        # Your spider definition
+        ...
+
+
+    async def crawl_view(request):
+        runner = AsyncCrawlerRunner(settings={"TWISTED_REACTOR_ENABLED": False})
+        await runner.crawl(MySpider)  # completes when the spider finishes
+        return HttpResponse("Crawling finished")
+
+.. note:: Running Scrapy without a Twisted reactor is experimental and has
+    some limitations, described in :ref:`asyncio-without-reactor`.
+
+.. _run-in-notebook:
+
+Running spiders in Jupyter notebooks
+====================================
+
+You can run Scrapy spiders in Jupyter notebooks. You need to use
+:class:`~scrapy.crawler.AsyncCrawlerRunner` with
+:setting:`TWISTED_REACTOR_ENABLED` set to ``False`` for this, so that Scrapy
+uses the event loop provided by the notebook kernel. As
+:class:`~scrapy.crawler.AsyncCrawlerRunner` doesn't configure logging, and you
+most likely want to see the spider log in the notebook, you should call
+:func:`scrapy.utils.log.configure_logging`. Here is a full example, which
+supports rerunning both as a single cell and as separate cells:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    from scrapy import Spider
+    from scrapy.crawler import AsyncCrawlerRunner
+    from scrapy.utils.log import configure_logging
+
+    configure_logging()
+
+
+    class BooksSpider(Spider):
+        name = "books"
+        start_urls = ["https://books.toscrape.com"]
+
+        def parse(self, response):
+            for book in response.css("h3"):
+                yield {"title": book.css("a::attr(title)").get()}
+
+
+    runner = AsyncCrawlerRunner({"TWISTED_REACTOR_ENABLED": False})
+    await runner.crawl(BooksSpider)
+
+.. note:: Running Scrapy without a Twisted reactor is experimental and has
+    some limitations, described in :ref:`asyncio-without-reactor`.
 
 .. _run-multiple-spiders: