gistfile1.py

from scrapy.spider import Spider
from scrapy.http import Request


class StateSpider(Spider):
    name = 'state'

    def start_requests(self):
        print 'State:', getattr(self, 'state', None)
        yield Request('http://example.com')

    def parse(self, response):
        self.state['items_count'] = self.state.get('items_count', 0) + 1