Goirate

Watching a lot of movies and series, it quickly became difficult to keep track of what was coming out and when. Not to call managing a few torrents tiresome, but when there's 5-10 new episodes for things you watch coming out every week, you begin to wonder if all of these extra clicks are really necessary. This also refers to wasted clicks, for when you know that an episode aired but you don't quite know yet if there's a torrent out for the 1080p version you prefer. With all this in mind, I first attempted to automate this with a simple python script, which would run as a cron job, crawl the Pirate Bay for torrents of new episodes, send me the ones it finds via e-mail and update the list of series so that it would begin watching out for the next episode. And the funny thing that script worked like clockwork, monitoring at least 40 different series over a period of two years.

Then the point came, when I wanted more features and automation, and that old python script was never written to be particularly scalable. So I began development of Goirate. This tool aims to become an all-in-one suite for automating your every piratey need. It works as a CLI program, which is designed to go through the internet searching for torrents much like a human would. Expanding upon the original idea of scanning for torrents as part of the cron job, this tool operates on a more robust foundation, which is able to detect and go through multiple Pirate Bay mirrors. It also expands upon dealing with media, by utilizing APIs, crawling through IMDb and more.

🗺️ TODO

• Replace IMDB scraping with OMDB API.
• Replace use of TVDB with free alternative (probably TVMaze).
• Replace tables in stdout with a more readable format.
• Add cache & retry system for torrents whose attempts to add to the designated torrent client fail.
• Support for a proxy or VPN to avoid getting flogged.
• Interactive CLI for search results, so that the user can navigate with the keyboard and select which to send to qBittorrent for download.
• Add more sources than the PirateBay.

⚓ Installation

You can find compiled binaries for your architecture on the GitHub releases page.

Updating

The tool comes with a self-updater.

$ goirate update
Updating to version: 0.9.1

$ goirate --version
Goirate build: 0.9.1

Build from source

Fetch the project using go get.

$ go get -d gitlab.com/haath/goirate

By default dep is used for dependency management.

The Makefile has a shortcut to running dep and go install.

$ make install

Using go get to fetch dependencies is theoretically possible but it is not recommended. Also, attempting to install the tool with go get -u will not work as it uses packr for building. To build yourself use the Makefile or have a look at it.

Movies

This tool retrieves info on movies from the OMDb API. It is recommended to obtain an API key, and add it to ~/.goirate/config.toml or in the GOIRATE_OMDB_API_KEY environment variable.

If an OMDb API key is not provided, the IMDb.com website will be scraped instead as a fallback. However this possibility may stop working at any time, if IMDb updates their pages.

Search

You can fetch a movie - and torrents for it - in three ways.

# Using its IMDb url
$ goirate movie "https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1028576/"
Secretariat
IMDbID:         1028576
Year:           2010
Rating:         7.1
Duration:       2h 3min
Poster:         https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTgwNDkyMDU3NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjMyNjI4Mw@@._V1_UX182_CR0,0,182,268_AL_.jpg

Secretariat[2010]DvDrip-aXXo
URL:            ** omitted **
Seeds/Peers:    1 / 1
Size:           735.8 MB
Trusted:        true
Magnet:
magnet:?** omitted **

# Equivalently, using its IMDb ID
$ goirate movie "1028576"

# Using a partial name
$ goirate movie "avengers"
The Avengers
IMDbID:         0848228
Year:           2012
Rating:         8.1
Duration:       2h 23min
...

# Using both a partial name and a release year to narrow down the search
$ goirate movie -y 2018 "avengers"
Avengers: Infinity War
IMDbID:         4154756
Year:           2018
Rating:         8.6
Duration:       2h 29min
...

If you don't remember a movie's title or release year very accurately, you can also do a search.

$ goirate movie-search "harry potter" -c 4
| IMDb ID |             Title              | Year |
|---------|--------------------------------|------|
| 0241527 |      Harry Potter and the      | 2001 |
|         |        Sorcerer's Stone        |      |
| 0330373 | Harry Potter and the Goblet of | 2005 |
|         |              Fire              |      |
| 0417741 |      Harry Potter and the      | 2009 |
|         |       Half-Blood Prince        |      |
| 1201607 |  Harry Potter and the Deathly  | 2011 |
|         |        Hallows: Part 2         |      |

Using the -d or --download options will also send the torrent to the running qBittorrent client for download.

Series

For this tool to manage series, you need to obtain an API key from TheTVDB.com and include it in Goirate's configuration at ~/.goirate/config.toml. Once logged in, the following can be found here.

[tvdb]
  api_key = "< API Key >"
  user_key = "< Unique ID >"
  username = "< Username >"

Create a watchlist of series, by using the series add command. This stores a list of your series in your account's configuration, specifically in ~/.goirate/series.toml, along with the last episode watched for each one. The names can be partial, as they will be used to search for the full name on the TVDB API. If the last episode is not specified, the API will be used to fetch the number of the last episode that aired for this series.

$ goirate series add "Strike Back" -e "S02E04"
$ goirate series add "The Walking Dead" -e "Season 3 Episode 1"
$ goirate series add "expanse"

You can also add a series by its IMDb ID or URL.

$ goirate series add "https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1856010/" --ls
|   ID   |       Series        | Season | Last Episode | Min. Quality |
|--------|---------------------|--------|--------------|--------------|
| 262980 | House of Cards (US) |   5    |      13      |              |

The series show command can be used to display the series currently on the watchlist. The -j flag also applies here, printing out the list in JSON format instead.

$ goirate series show
|   ID   |      Series      | Season | Last Episode | Min. Quality |
|--------|------------------|--------|--------------|--------------|
| 280619 | The Expanse      |   3    |      13      |              |
| 153021 | The Walking Dead |   5    |      13      |    1080p     |

The series remove command can be used to remove a series given either a case-insensitive substring in its name, or its TVDB ID.

$ goirate series remove expanse
$ goirate series remove 153021

With a list of series in the watchlist, use the series scan command to search for new episodes.

$ goirate series scan
Torrent found for: The Americans (2013) S06E05
https://pirateproxy.gdn/** omitted **
magnet:?** omitted **

Torrent found for: The Americans (2013) S06E06
https://pirateproxy.gdn/** omitted **
magnet:?** omitted **

When the scanner finds a new episode it will also advance the series' last watched episode number forward. This way, ideally, the tool can keep the watchlist updated while scanning periodically as part of a cron job. To perform a scan without updating the watchlist use the --no-update flag, and, to perform one without any other side-effects or actions use the --dry-run flag.

E-mail Notifications

Torrents found when scanning can be sent via e-mail. To enable this, edit the configuration file at ~/.goirate/config.toml to enable e-mail notifications, configure the smtp settings and specify the list of recipients.

[smtp]
  host = "smtp.gmail.com"
  port = 587
  username = "...@gmail.com"
  password = "..."

[actions]
  email = "true"
  notify = ["...@gmail.com"]
  ...

Watchlist actions can also be specified individually for each series, by editing the file at ~/.goirate/series.toml. Action-related options that are specified for a specific series, will override those of the global configuration file.

[[series]]
  title = "The Last Ship"
  ...
  [series.actions]
    email = "false"
    notify = []

Automatic Downloads

The tool can also be configured to automatically send new torrents to a running qBittorent client for download. To enable this edit the configuration file at ~/.goirate/config.toml to include the necessary HTTP configuration.

[qbittorrent]
  url = "https://localhost:8080"
  username = ""
  password = ""

[actions]
  ...
  download = "true"

Same as with e-mails, this feature can also be enabled or disabled for a specific series at ~/.goirate/series.toml.

[[series]]
  title = "The Last Ship"
  ...
  [series.actions]
    download = "false"

With this enabled, any torrents found during scanning will have their magnet links added to the qBittorent client. Whether or not they begin downloading immediately once they are added depends on the configuration on the client itself.

Environment Variables

These variables are used to configure Goirate, when editing the configuration file is not preferable. For example inside a Docker container.

Known Issues

• The scanner will read and write to the ~/.goirate/series.toml file multiple times while running without actually locking the file. So editting the file manually while the series scan command is running may cause your changes to be overwritten.
• To fill the configuration file at ~/.goirate/options.toml with the default options, the file is overwritten every time the tool runs. Meaning that even for operations that do not affect the configuration, the file is opened with write privileges. This is temporary until I can figure out a better way to update the config file with new options whenever there's an update.