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Projects provide logical grouping for spiders and queue items. Each project is a namespace that keeps related spiders organized.

projects list

List all projects in the database.

Syntax

Output

Information Shown

  • Project name: Identifier used in all commands
  • Spider count: Number of spiders in this project
  • Queue items: Number of items in queue for this project

Empty Database

Project Organization

Projects are implicit - they don’t need to be created explicitly. When you import a spider or add a queue item with --project <name>, the project is automatically associated.
If --project is not specified, commands use default.
Always use explicit --project names for clarity. Avoid relying on the default.

Project Naming

Project names should be:
  • Descriptive: news, ecommerce, research
  • Lowercase: news not News
  • No spaces: tech_blogs not tech blogs
  • Consistent: Choose a naming scheme and stick to it

Use Cases

Multi-Domain Projects

Group related spiders:

Team Organization

Separate projects by team or purpose:

Development vs Production

Separate test and production spiders:

Project-Level Operations

List Spiders by Project

Run All Spiders in Project

Queue Management by Project

Export Project Data

Data Organization

Files are organized by project:

Database Schema

Projects are stored as string fields:

spiders Table

crawl_queue Table

Project Uniqueness

  • Spiders: Unique by (name, project) - same spider name can exist in different projects
  • Queue: Unique by (project_name, website_url) - same URL can be in different projects

Renaming Projects

Projects can be renamed via direct database updates:
Manually renaming projects does not rename the data directories. You’ll need to rename those separately:

Deleting Projects

Delete all spiders in a project:
Clean up queue:
Remove data directory:

Parallel Processing by Project

Run multiple projects in parallel:

Project Statistics

Get detailed stats per project:

Best Practices

  • Use descriptive names: tech_news_monitoring not proj1
  • Separate dev and prod: Use dev_ and prod_ prefixes
  • Document project purpose: Maintain a projects.md file describing each project
  • Consistent naming: Choose a convention (simple names, prefixed names, or dated names) and stick to it

Migrating Between Projects

Next Steps

Spider Management

Import spiders into projects

Queue Management

Add URLs to project queues