Scrapy: How To Manually Insert A Request From A Spider_idle Event Callback?

I've created a spider, and have linked a method to the spider_idle event. How do I add a request manually? I can't just return the item from parse -- parse is not running in this

Solution 1:

class FooSpider(BaseSpider):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(FooSpider, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        dispatcher.connect(self.dont_close_me, signals.spider_idle)

    def dont_close_me(self, spider):
        if spider != self:
            return

        self.crawler.engine.crawl(self.create_request(), spider)

        raise DontCloseSpider("..I prefer live spiders.")

Update 2016:

class FooSpider(BaseSpider):
    yet = False

    @classmethod
    def from_crawler(cls, crawler, *args, **kwargs):
        from_crawler = super(FooSpider, cls).from_crawler
        spider = from_crawler(crawler, *args, **kwargs)
        crawler.signals.connect(spider.idle, signal=scrapy.signals.spider_idle)
        return spider

    def idle(self):
        if not self.yet:
            self.crawler.engine.crawl(self.create_request(), self)
            self.yet = True