Automating downloads with FlexGet
Media Miner
Take the strain out of downloading content from the Internet with FlexGet. Thanks to plugins, you can customize the tool to meet your requirements.
Your *nix operating system comes with a large selection of tools (e.g., cron) for handling recurring tasks, such as launching scripts at specific times; however, a number of other specialist tools can help the user in other areas as well. The FlexGet [1] Python tool specializes in automating Torrent, Usenet, podcast, comics, movie, and series downloads. To do so, it relies on RSS feeds [2], HTML pages, and CSV file sources. A graphical user interface [3] is currently on the development roadmap, but the current offering is still fairly rudimentary.
FlexGet gets much of its functionality from plugins [4]. The software tool initially requires some fairly complex configuration work, but once you have understood the principle and automated various applications, it will save you a huge amount of time. As an example, I show you how I can download episodes of a series from the German ZDF Mediathek site.
Installation
The first step is to install FlexGet. It is a good idea to type python -V upfront to make sure you have at least Python version 2.6 or 2.7 on your system. To set up FlexGet, you can then use the Python Pip tool, which you might also need to install (Listing 1).
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