Torrents

Search and download torrents from your favorite bittorrent tracker using Ruby 1.9.

Download and get information like:

  • Subtitles, english and swedish.
  • Movie information (if the torrent is a movie), actors, grade, original title, length, trailers and so on.
  • A direct download link to the torrent.
  • IMDB link

This version is no longer maintained

Version 1.0 is no longer maintained. I might release version 2.0 in the future.

Which trackers are implemented at the moment?

Open trackers

Closed trackers

How to use

Search for torrents

Torrents.the_pirate_bay.search("chuck").results

List recent torrents

Torrents.the_pirate_bay.results

List recent torrents - with category

Torrents.the_pirate_bay.category(:movies).results

Specify a page

The page method can be places anywhere before the results method.

It starts counting from 1 and goes up, no matter what is used on the site it self.

Torrents.the_pirate_bay.page(6).results

Specify some cookies

Some trackers requires cookies to work, even though The Pirate Bay is not one of them.

Torrents.the_pirate_bay.cookies({
  user_id: "123", 
  hash: "c4656002ce46f9b418ce72daccfa5424"
}).results

Step through torrents

Here is an example of how to step through the 10 first pages.

torrents = Torrents.the_pirate_bay.step
10.times { torrents.results }

You just add the step method and it will increment page everytime you apply the results method.

What methods to work with

The results method

As soon as you apply the results method on the query it will try to execute your request. If you for example want to activate the debugger, define some cookies or specify a page, then you might do something like this.

Torrents.the_pirate_bay.page(5).debug(true).cookies(:my_cookie => "value").results

It will return a list of Container::Torrent object if the request was sucessfull, otherwise an empty list.

The find_by_details method

If you have access to a single details link and want to get some useful data from it, then find_by_details might fit you needs.

The method takes the url as an argument and returns a single Container::Torrent object.

Torrents.the_pirate_bay.find_by_details("http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6173093/")

What data to work with

The Container::Torrent class

The class has some nice accessors that might be useful.

  • title (String) The title.
  • details (String) The url to the details page.
  • seeders (Fixnum) The amount of seeders.
  • dead? (Boolean) Check to see if the torrent has no seeders. If it has no seeders, then dead? will be true.
  • torrent (String) The url. This should be a direct link to the torrent.
  • id (Fixnum) An unique id for the torrent. The id is only unique for this specific torrent, not all torrents.
  • tid (String) The tid method, also known as torrent id is a truly unique identifier for all torrents. It is generated using a MD5 with the torrent domain and the id method as a seed.
  • torrent_id (String) The same as the tid method.
  • imdb (String) The imdb link for the torrent, if the details view contains one.
  • imdb_id (String) The imdb id for the torrent, if the details view contain one. Example: tt0066026.
  • subtitle (Undertexter) The subtitle for the torrent. Takes one argument, the language for the subtitle. Default is :english. Read more about it here.
  • movie (MovieSearcher) Read more about the returned object at the MovieSearcher project page.

Note: The seeders, movie, subtitle, imdb_id and ìmdb method will do another request to the tracker, which means that it will take a bit longer to load then the other methods.

What cookies to pass

Here is an example

Torrents.torrentleech.cookies({
  :member_id => "123", 
  :pass_hash => "value", 
  :PHPSESSID => "value"
}).results

All values you pass to cookies must be of type string, like in the example above.

  • Torrentleech
    • member_id
    • pass_hash
    • PHPSESSID
    • tluid
    • tlpass
  • TTI
    • hass
    • pass
    • uid

General note: The cookies you pass might be browser and IP-adress sensitive. Which means that it might only work in the current browser using the current Internet connection.

Torrentleech note: Remember to check the Remember Me checkbox before using your browsers cookies.

Error handling

I decided in the beginning of the project to rescue parse errors during the runtime and instead print them as warnings.

Why? - Lack of good selectors

The trackers parser, this one for example, isn't always returning the right data.

Due to the lack of useful CSS selectors on the given tracker. It returns 32 rows, the first and the last containing the header and the footer of the table. The unwanted results will be thrown away by the validator, but may raise errors during the run time. The easiest way to solve it was to just isolate the tracker, if it raised an error we return nil.

Get the error messages

You can read errors in two ways.

Activate the debugger by adding the debug method to your query. The errors will be printed as warnings in the console.

Torrents.the_pirate_bay.debug(true).results

Request a list of errors using the errors method.

p Torrents.the_pirate_bay.errors
# => ["...undefined method `attr' for nil:NilClass>...", "32 torrents where found, 2 where not valid", "..."]

How do access tracker X

Here is how to access an implemented tracker. The first static method to apply is the name of the tracker in lower non camel cased letters.

The Pirate Bay becomes the_pirate_bay, TTI becomes tti and Torrentleech torrentleech.

Here is an example.

Torrents.torrentleech.cookies({:my_cookie => "value"}).results

Take a look at the tests for all trackers to get to know more.

Add you own tracker

I'm about to write a wiki that describes how to add you own site. Until then, take a look at the parser for The Pirate Bay.

All heavy lifting has already been done, so adding another tracker should be quite easy.

I'm using Nokogiri to parse data from the site, which in most cases means that you don't have to mess with regular expressions.

Don't know Nokogiri? Take a look at this awesome screen cast by Ryan Bates.

The short version

  1. Create your own fork of the project.
  2. Create and implement a tracker file inside the tracker directory.
  3. Add a cached version of the tracker here. Note: Remember to remove sensitive data from the cache like user name and uid.
  4. Add tests for it, here is a skeleton for the Pirate Bay class to use as a start.
  5. Add the tracker to the readme.
  6. Do a pull request, if you want to share you implementation with the world.

You don't have to take care about exceptions, Torrents does that for you.

Disclaimer

Before you use Torrents make sure you have permission from the tracker in question to use their data.

How do install

[sudo] gem install torrents

How to use it in a rails 3 project

Add gem 'torrents' to your Gemfile and run bundle.

Requirements

Torrents is tested in OS X 10.6.6 using Ruby 1.9.2.

License

Torrents is released under the MIT license.