transmission-rss

transmission-rss is basically a workaround for transmission's lack of the ability to monitor RSS feeds and automatically add enclosed torrent links.

It works with transmission-daemon and transmission-gtk (if the web frontend is enabled in the settings dialog). Sites like showrss.info and ezrss.it or self-hosted seriesly instances are suited well as feed sources.

A tool called transmission-add-file is also included for mass adding of torrent files.

As it's done with poems, I devote this very artful and romantic piece of code to the single most delightful human being: Ann.

The minimum supported Ruby version is 2.1. (You will need rbenv if your os does not support Ruby >= 2.1, e.g. on Debian wheezy.)

Note, that this README is for the current development branch! You can find a link to a suitable README for your version on the releases page.

gem install transmission-rss

git clone https://github.com/nning/transmission-rss
cd transmission-rss
bundle
gem build transmission-rss.gemspec
gem install transmission-rss-*.gem

docker run -t \
  -v $(pwd)/transmission-rss.conf:/etc/transmission-rss.conf \
  nning2/transmission-rss:v1.2.1

There is a preview version of transmission-rss written in Go in the "go" subfolder. It has a separate README and supports a similar configuration format with some caveats but does not implement nearly as many features as the Ruby version (on purpose). It comes with CLI utilities for adding torrents by file or magnet link, and to add torrents from eztv by imdb ID.

Install from the repository:

make install

A yaml formatted config file is expected at /etc/transmission-rss.conf. Users can override some options for their transmission-rss instances by providing a config at ~/.config/transmission-rss/config.yml (or in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME instead of ~/.config).

WARNING: If you want to override a nested option like log.target you also have to explicitly specify the others like log.level. (True for categories server, login, log, privileges, and client.)

It should at least contain a list of feeds:

feeds:
  - url: http://example.com/feed1
  - url: http://example.com/feed2

Feed item titles can be filtered by a regular expression:

feeds:
  - url: http://example.com/feed1
    regexp: foo
  - url: http://example.com/feed2
    regexp: (foo|bar)

Feeds can also be configured to download files to specific directory:

feeds:
  - url: http://example.com/feed1
    download_dir: /home/user/Downloads

Setting the seed ratio limit is supported per feed:

feeds:
  - url: http://example.com/feed1
    seed_ratio_limit: 0

Configurable certificate validation, good for self-signed certificates. Default is true:

feeds:
  - url: http://example.com/feed1
    validate_cert: false

Using the GUID instead of the link for tracking seen torrents is also available, useful for changing URLs such as Prowlarr's proxy links. Default is false:

feeds:
  - url: http://example.com/feed1
    seen_by_guid: true

The following configuration file example contains every existing option (although update_interval, add_paused, server, log, fork, single, and pid_file are default values and could be omitted). The default log.target is STDERR. privileges is not defined by default, so the script runs as current user/group. login is also not defined by default. It has to be defined, if transmission is configured for HTTP basic authentication.

See ./transmission-rss.conf.example for more documentation.

feeds:
  - url: http://example.com/feed1
  - url: http://example.com/feed2
  - url: http://example.com/feed3
    regexp: match1
  - url: http://example.com/feed4
    regexp: (match1|match2)
  - url: http://example.com/feed5
    download_path: /home/user/Downloads
    delay_time: 2
  - url: http://example.com/feed6
    seed_ratio_limit: 1
  - url: http://example.com/feed7
    regexp:
      - match1
      - match2
  - url: http://example.com/feed8
    regexp:
      - matcher: match1
        download_dir: /home/user/match1
      - matcher: match2
        download_dir: /home/user/match2
  - url: http://example.com/feed9
    validate_cert: false
    seen_by_guid: true

update_interval: 600

add_paused: false

server:
  host: localhost
  port: 9091
  tls: false
  rpc_path: /transmission/rpc

login:
  username: transmission
  password: transmission

log:
  target: /var/log/transmissiond-rss.log
  level: debug

privileges:
  user: nobody
  group: nobody

client:
  timeout: 5

fork: false

single: false

pid_file: false

seen_file: ~/.config/transmission/seen

The following content can be saved into /etc/systemd/system/transmission-rss.service to create a systemd unit. Remember checking the path in ExecStart.

[Unit]
Description=Transmission RSS daemon.
After=network.target transmission-daemon.service

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/transmission-rss -f
ExecReload=/bin/kill -s HUP $MAINPID

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

The unit files are reloaded by systemctl daemon-reload. You can then start transmission-rss by running systemctl start transmission-rss. Starting on boot, can be enabled systemctl enable transmission-rss.

transmission-rss can also be started in a single run mode, in which it runs a single loop and then exits. To do so, transmission-rss needs to be started with the -s flag. An example crontab line for running every 10 minutes can be:

*/10 * * * * /usr/local/bin/transmission-rss -s