Scrapy Cloud is a platform provided by Scrapinghub that allows you to deploy, run and manage your Scrapy spiders. Here are the steps to use Scrapy Cloud.

Step 1: Install Scrapy and Shub

First of all, you need to have Scrapy installed. You can install Scrapy using pip:

pip install Scrapy

You will also need to install Shub, Scrapinghub's command line client. You can install Shub using pip:

pip install shub

Step 2: Login to Scrapy Cloud

To log in to Scrapy Cloud from your terminal, use the following Shub command and follow the prompts:

shub login

You will need your Scrapinghub API key for this step. You can find this key in your Scrapinghub dashboard.

Step 3: Deploy your Spider

To deploy your spider to Scrapy Cloud, navigate to your Scrapy project's directory and use the following Shub command:

shub deploy

During this step, you will be asked to specify the target where you want to deploy your spider. For Scrapy Cloud, this target is the project ID, which you can find in your Scrapinghub dashboard.

Step 4: Run your Spider

Once your spider is deployed, you can run it using the following Shub command:

shub schedule <spider_name>

Replace <spider_name> with the name of your spider.

Step 5: Fetch your Data

You can fetch your scraped data from Scrapy Cloud using the following Shub command:

shub items <project_id>/<spider_id>/<job_id>

Replace <project_id>, <spider_id>, and <job_id> with your project's ID, your spider's ID, and the ID of the job, respectively. You can find these IDs in your Scrapinghub dashboard.

Conclusion

Scrapy Cloud is a powerful platform that can make running and managing your Scrapy spiders much easier. It offers many features such as easy deployment, scheduling, and data storage. By following these steps, you can get started with Scrapy Cloud in no time.

Remember, Scrapy and Shub are Python-based tools, so you should be familiar with Python to use them effectively.