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Version: 2.7

Quick start

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Learn how to create and run Actors using the Apify SDK for Python.

Step 1: Create Actors

To create and run Actors in Apify Console, refer to the Console documentation.

To create a new Apify Actor on your computer, you can use the Apify CLI, and select one of the Python Actor templates.

For example, to create an Actor from the Python SDK template, you can use the apify create command.

apify create my-first-actor --template python-start

This will create a new folder called my-first-actor, download and extract the "Getting started with Python" Actor template there, create a virtual environment in my-first-actor/.venv, and install the Actor dependencies in it.

Step 2: Run Actors

To run the Actor, you can use the apify run command:

cd my-first-actor
apify run

This command:

  • Activates the virtual environment in .venv (if no other virtual environment is activated yet)
  • Starts the Actor with the appropriate environment variables for local running
  • Configures it to use local storages from the storage folder

The Actor input, for example, will be in storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json.

Step 3: Understand Actor structure

All Python Actor templates follow the same structure.

The .actor/ directory contains the Actor configuration, such as the Actor's definition and input schema, and the Dockerfile necessary to run the Actor on the Apify platform.

The Actor's runtime dependencies are specified in the requirements.txt file, which follows the standard requirements file format.

The Actor's source code is in the src/ folder. This folder contains two important files:

  • main.py - which contains the main function of the Actor
  • __main__.py - which is the entrypoint of the Actor package, setting up the Actor logger and executing the Actor's main function via asyncio.run.
import asyncio

from .main import main

if __name__ == '__main__':
    asyncio.run(main())

If you want to modify the Actor structure, you need to make sure that your Actor is executable as a module, via python -m src, as that is the command started by apify run in the Apify CLI. We recommend keeping the entrypoint for the Actor in the src/__main__.py file.

Step 4: Add dependencies

Adding dependencies into the Actor is simple.

First, add them in the requirements.txt file in the Actor source folder.

Then activate the virtual environment in .venv:

source .venv/bin/activate

Then install the dependencies:

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Next steps

Guides

Integrate the Apify SDK with popular web scraping libraries by following these guides:

Concepts

For a deeper understanding of the Apify SDK's features, refer to the Concepts section in the sidebar. Key topics include: