Automatic 0.7.2


Automatic is an RSS downloader for Linux based systems, that grabs your favorite torrents based on filters you specify.

It was designed to integrate with the popular BitTorrent client Transmission (http://transmissionbt.com). Any torrents grabbed by Automatic are directly added to Transmission, effectively making it an auto-downloader.

But even if you don't use Transmission you can use Automatic. If the BitTorrent client of your choice has a "watch folder" feature, you can simply instruct Automatic to save the torrents to a directory of your choice. The client can then check the folder at given intervals and start any present torrents immediately.

Installing Automatic

For installation help please read the INSTALL instructions included in the packages.

Dependencies

In order to correctly compile Automatic, make sure these libraries are installed on your system:

Using Automatic

Automatic uses a configuration file (automatic.conf) for all its preferences. Default location for the file is /etc/automatic.conf, but you can specify a different folder on  the command-line.

Type automatic --help for further instructions.

Please note that the file is named automatic.conf-sample in the package, so you have to rename it (and change its content) before using Automatic.

The sample configuration file contains help on all available options and should be self-explanatory.



Download



Latest version:             automatic-0.7.2-src.tar.gz


ChangeLog

2012-02-10 v0.7.2
Fixed:Automatic could crash in some rare cases.
2012-01-09 v0.7.1
Fixed:Problems with assigning a feed ID to feeds and filters.
2011-12-08 v0.7.0
Added:Assign each feed an ID, and bind filters to a certain feed using the ID.
Changed:Store RSS GUID in history file instead of item URL.
2011-10-10 v0.6.7
Fixed:Issues with websites expecting a HTTP UserAgent.
Fixed:Ignore multi-option options (filter, feed) with multiple suboptions on the same line.
2011-09-11 v0.6.6
Fixed:Issues with UTF8 characters in the config file in general
Fixed:Automatic would try to send Prowl notification even if an invalid key was specified
2011-04-20 v0.6.5
Fixed:Updated Prowl API URL to prowlapp.com
Fixed:Curl redirect issue with some RSS feeds.
Fixed:Allow UTF8 characters in regular expressions
2010-10-17 v0.6.4
Added:New commandline option "--append-log|-a" to not oite the log from a previous session
Fixed:Determining filename from "Content-Dispositon" might include stray double-quote
2010-05-12 v0.6.2
Fixed:The config parser choked on multiple newlines at the end of a config file
2010-04-30 v0.6.1
Fixed:Parsing of the :COOKIE: identifier within a feed URL didn't always work.
2010-04-23 v0.6
Added:Support for private trackers/RSS feeds.
Added:Specify separate download folders per pattern/filter.
2010-03-07 v0.5.1
Fixed:The regular expression for extracting a torrent's filename from the HTTP response header returned a string 1 character longer than the actual filename.
2010-02-15 v0.5
Fixed: Automatic didn't like Transmission torrent IDs greater than 128
Added: Proper logging (even in daemon mode) with commandline paramter
2009-12-05 v0.4.4
Fixed: Segfault when a regular expression within the "patterns" option was missing the closing double-quote
Fixed: Raised the maximum size for a parameter (necessary if you have many (long) patterns)
2009-11-23 v0.4.3
Fixed: Properly strip HTTP header lines
Fixed: Only acquire Transmission RPC version if Transmission is to be used
Fixed: Only check Prowl API key if there actually is a key available
Added: The above changes make Automatic work with NZB feeds as well (yay!)
2009-10-29 v0.4.2
Added: Prowl notification support
Added: External script support. You can now specify an external script that gets fired whenever Automatic finds a match in the RSS feeds (Contributed by Oolan Zimmer, thank you very much!)
Fixed: URLs with semicolons were wrongly parsed
Changed: Reconfigured libcurl a little to deal with infinite timeouts
2009-06-10 v0.4.1
Fixed: Automatic couldn't save a history of downloaded torrents anymore since Transmission 1.71
2009-05-14 v0.4
Added: New option "upload-limit" in automatic.conf. Set to a value in KB/s, Automatic will limit the upload speed for each new torrent to this value.
Added: New commandline option "-o/--once": Quit Automatic after checking RSS feeds once. Use this if you want to use Automatic in conjunction with crontab.
Fixed: Compatibility issue with Transmission 1.53+ and 1.61+ (CSRF protection)
2009-04-19 v0.3.3 (unreleased)
Fixed: Possible memory leak in get_tr_folder() and get_temp_folder()
2009-02-09 v0.3.2
Fixed: Problems with download history if Automatic downloaded many torrents at once
Added: New option "start-torrents" in automatic.conf. If set to "yes", torrents will start to download automatically when added to Transmission (default behavior).
If set to "no", they'll be added in a "Paused" state
2009-01-16 v0.3.1
Fixed: Automatic didn't follow redirects (Code 302) when downloading torrent files
2008-11-29 v0.3
Changed: If you have multiple feeds, the statefile will now save as many items as there are in all your feeds combined
Changed: Switch from POSIX regular expressions to PCRE. This allows for exclusion patterns.
Fixed: Problem where some feeds located at secure HTTPS pages could not be downloaded
2008-09-24 v0.2.1
Fixed: Segfault bug that occured as soon as the download history went full
2008-08-15 v0.2
Added: Support for Transmission 1.3
Added: Support for multiple RSS feeds
Changed: Removed logging to logfile for now, was causing problems
2008-07-28 v0.1.4
Fixed: Segmentation fault when download of a torrent was unsucessful
2008-06-25 v0.1.3.1
Fixed: Segmentation fault when TEMPDIR/TMPDIR environment variables weren't set
2008-06-24 v0.1.3
Fixed: Problems with saving the state
Added: New config option "torrent-folder" for storing the downloaded torrent files
Changed: Works now on "normal" Linux distributions (previously worked only on a specific NAS device)
2008-05-26 v0.1.2
Added: New config option "transmission-home" Makes it unnecessary to set the environment variable TRANSMISSION_HOME
2008-05-25 v0.1.1
Fixed: Problem with the configuration file parser
2008-05-24 v0.1.0
Added: Initial release


For questions and comments you can contact me at 1100101+automatic<at>gmail<dot>com or visit the Transmission forums at http://forum.transmissionbt.com/.