Export scrapy items to different files

Question

I'm scraping review from moocs likes this one

From there I'm getting all the course details, 5 items and another 6 items from each review itself.

This is the code I have for the course details:

def parse_reviews(self, response):
    l = ItemLoader(item=MoocsItem(), response=response)
    l.add_xpath('course_title', '//*[@class="course-header-ng__main-info__name__title"]//text()')
    l.add_xpath('course_description', '//*[@class="course-info__description"]//p/text()')
    l.add_xpath('course_instructors', '//*[@class="course-info__instructors__names"]//text()')
    l.add_xpath('course_key_concepts', '//*[@class="key-concepts__labels"]//text()')
    l.add_value('course_link', response.url)
    return l.load_item()

Now I want to include the review details, another 5 items for each review. Since the course data is common for all the reviews I want to store it in a different file and use course name/id to relate the data afterward.

This is the code I have for the review's items:

for review in response.xpath('//*[@class="review-body"]'):
    review_body = review.xpath('.//div[@class="review-body__content"]//text()').extract()
    course_stage =  review.xpath('.//*[@class="review-body-info__course-stage--completed"]//text()').extract()
    user_name =  review.xpath('.//*[@class="review-body__username"]//text()').extract()
    review_date =  review.xpath('.//*[@itemprop="datePublished"]/@datetime').extract()
    score =  review.xpath('.//*[@class="sr-only"]//text()').extract()

I tried to work with a temporary solution, returning all the items for each case but is not working either:

def parse_reviews(self, response):
    #print response.body
    l = ItemLoader(item=MoocsItem(), response=response)
    #l = MyItemLoader(selector=response)
    l.add_xpath('course_title', '//*[@class="course-header-ng__main-info__name__title"]//text()')
    l.add_xpath('course_description', '//*[@class="course-info__description"]//p/text()')
    l.add_xpath('course_instructors', '//*[@class="course-info__instructors__names"]//text()')
    l.add_xpath('course_key_concepts', '//*[@class="key-concepts__labels"]//text()')
    l.add_value('course_link', response.url)

    for review in response.xpath('//*[@class="review-body"]'):
        l.add_xpath('review_body', './/div[@class="review-body__content"]//text()')
        l.add_xpath('course_stage', './/*[@class="review-body-info__course-stage--completed"]//text()')
        l.add_xpath('user_name', './/*[@class="review-body__username"]//text()')
        l.add_xpath('review_date', './/*[@itemprop="datePublished"]/@datetime')
        l.add_xpath('score', './/*[@class="sr-only"]//text()')

        yield l.load_item()

The output file for that script is corrupted, cells are displaced and the size of the fields is not correct.

EDIT: I want to have two files at the output:

The first one containing:

course_title,course_description,course_instructors,course_key_concepts,course_link

And the second one with:

course_title,review_body,course_stage,user_name,review_date,score

Answer 1

The issue is you are mixing everything up into a single item, which is not the right way to do it. You should created two items MoocsItem and MoocsReviewItem

And then update the code like below

def parse_reviews(self, response):
    #print response.body
    l = ItemLoader(item=MoocsItem(), response=response)
    l.add_xpath('course_title', '//*[@class="course-header-ng__main-info__name__title"]//text()')
    l.add_xpath('course_description', '//*[@class="course-info__description"]//p/text()')
    l.add_xpath('course_instructors', '//*[@class="course-info__instructors__names"]//text()')
    l.add_xpath('course_key_concepts', '//*[@class="key-concepts__labels"]//text()')
    l.add_value('course_link', response.url)

    item = l.load_item()

    for review in response.xpath('//*[@class="review-body"]'):
        r = ItemLoader(item=MoocsReviewItem(), response=response, selector=review)
        r.add_value('course_title', item['course_title'])
        r.add_xpath('review_body', './/div[@class="review-body__content"]//text()')
        r.add_xpath('course_stage', './/*[@class="review-body-info__course-stage--completed"]//text()')
        r.add_xpath('user_name', './/*[@class="review-body__username"]//text()')
        r.add_xpath('review_date', './/*[@itemprop="datePublished"]/@datetime')
        r.add_xpath('score', './/*[@class="sr-only"]//text()')

        yield r.load_item()

    yield item

Now what you want is that different item type goes in different csv files. Which is what the below SO thread answers

How can scrapy export items to separate csv files per item

Have not tested the below, but the code will become something like below

from scrapy.exporters import CsvItemExporter
from scrapy import signals
from scrapy.xlib.pydispatch import dispatcher


def item_type(item):
    return type(item).__name__.replace('Item','').lower()  # TeamItem => team

class MultiCSVItemPipeline(object):
    SaveTypes = ['moocs','moocsreview']

    def __init__(self):
        dispatcher.connect(self.spider_opened, signal=signals.spider_opened)
        dispatcher.connect(self.spider_closed, signal=signals.spider_closed)

    def spider_opened(self, spider):
        self.files = dict([ (name, open(CSVDir+name+'.csv','w+b')) for name in self.SaveTypes ])
        self.exporters = dict([ (name,CsvItemExporter(self.files[name])) for name in self.SaveTypes])
        [e.start_exporting() for e in self.exporters.values()]

    def spider_closed(self, spider):
        [e.finish_exporting() for e in self.exporters.values()]
        [f.close() for f in self.files.values()]

    def process_item(self, item, spider):
        what = item_type(item)
        if what in set(self.SaveTypes):
            self.exporters[what].export_item(item)
        return item

You need make sure the ITEM_PIPELINES is updated to use this MultiCSVItemPipeline class

ITEM_PIPELINES = {
    'mybot.pipelines.MultiCSVItemPipeline': 300,
}