Mar 16, 2024 • guide

OpenClaw Installation Guide

Complete installation and configuration for OpenClaw crawler framework

#Crawler #OpenClaw #Data Collection

OpenClaw Installation Guide

OpenClaw is an open-source distributed crawler framework that supports high concurrency, resumable crawling, and more.

Environment Requirements

Python 3.9+
Redis 5.0+
MongoDB 4.4+ or MySQL 8.0+
Linux/Unix system (recommended)

Quick Installation

1. Install Dependencies

# Install system dependencies sudo apt update sudo apt install -y python3-pip python3-venv redis-server Install MongoDB

wget -qO - https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-6.0.asc | sudo apt-key add - echo “deb [ arch=amd64,arm64 ] https://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu jammy/mongodb-org/6.0 multiverse” | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-6.0.list sudo apt update sudo apt install -y mongodb-org

2. Clone Project

git clone https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw.git
cd openclaw
git checkout stable  # Switch to stable branch

3. Create Virtual Environment

python3 -m venv venv source venv/bin/activate Install Python dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

Configuration Guide

Basic Configuration

# config/settings.yaml database: type: mongodb host: localhost port: 27017 name: openclaw_db redis: host: localhost port: 6379 db: 0

crawler: max_workers: 10 request_timeout: 30 retry_times: 3 user_agent: “OpenClaw/1.0”

Start Services

# Start Redis redis-server /etc/redis/redis.conf Start MongoDB sudo systemctl start mongod Start OpenClaw

python main.py —config config/settings.yaml

Create Crawler Tasks

Example Crawler

# spiders/example.py
from openclaw import Spider, Request
class ExampleSpider(Spider):
name = “example”
start_urls = [“https://example.com”]
def parse(self, response):
    title = response.css("h1::text").get()
    yield {"title": title}

    # Follow links
    for href in response.css("a::attr(href)"):
        yield Request(href.get(), callback=self.parse)</code></pre>


Run Crawler

# Run single crawler
python main.py crawl example
Run multiple crawlers concurrently
python main.py crawl spider1 spider2 spider3
Scheduled task
python main.py schedule —cron “0 */2 * * *” example


Advanced Features
Proxy Configuration

# config/proxies.yaml
proxies:
  - http://user:pass@proxy1.com:8080
  - http://user:pass@proxy2.com:8080
proxy_rotation: true
proxy_check: true


Data Export

# Export as JSON
python main.py export --format json --output data.json
Export as CSV
python main.py export —format csv —output data.csv
Write directly to database
python main.py export —database mongodb


Common Issues
Q: Crawler being blocked by anti-scraping?
A: Configure proxy pool, reduce crawling frequency, set reasonable User-Agent.
Q: High memory usage?
A: Adjust max_workers parameter, enable batch data processing.