zarzax the blog

photo credit: irina slutsky

I had some interesting requirements for my Bittorrent needs.  First I wanted to move everything to my linux mediaserver/fileserver.  So I needed a way to work with bittorrent files without traditional access to the machine.  eg. No screen or windowing system.  This led me to TorrentFlux-b4rt, which is a php based web interface to Transmission client meant to be run on apache servers.  Second I wanted to ability to download torrents automatically from RSS sources using scripting.  This is where the original TorrentFlux had failed me and I went searching.

The following is a gathering of scripts I have found and tested.  Most scripts require that you have access to Cron scheduling and the python scripting language.  And, of course, a bittorrent client that scans a directory looking for torrent files.  I am using these scripts in conjunction with rTorrent (a commandline bittorrent client) as well as TorrentFlux-b4rt on various servers.

FlexGet

FlexGet is a program aimed to automate downloading content (torrents, podcasts, etc.) from various sources like RSS-feeds, html-pages, various sites and more.

It’s most often used to download torrent-files from RSS-feeds and works very well in that environment, but there are additional modules for other kind of situations as well.

FlexGet is extremely useful in conjunction with applications and clients which have watch directory support.

- http://flexget.com/

I’ve been using flexget over the last few weeks and it is my top pick for script to use.

rsstorrent

rsstorrent is a very simple RSS torrent downloading script.  It does as advertised and is still being developed.  Though it lacks the nice documentation of FlexGet.

tvrss member script

This is the script that I had been using for about a year to automate the torrent downloading.  It scans the tvrss.net website using an easy to understand configuration file.  It worked like a charm for me but I found a new charm with more sparkle.

TED – Torrent Episode Downloader

This is a different way to download torrent episodes.  This is not a script.  It is a fully functional cross-platform program dedicated RSS Torrents.  It is way to heavy for my use. But interesting none the less.

ted can find episodes of any TV show you like to watch. Just add your favorite shows to ted and he will search for the newest episodes and downloads them for you. ted uses bittorrent and RSS technology to get you the newest episodes as fast as possible!
http://www.ted.nu/