FlexGet: Get Email Notifications Of Newly Available Torrent Files [How To] [Part #3]

This is the third and last part of our series on FlexGet. In this part, we will configure the FlexGet email plugin to get email notifications when new content (e.g. new TV Show episode) is available.

In this tutorial, we will use the configuration file that we have already created in the part II of the series.

The configuration file config.yml should look something like this:

tasks:
  my task:
    rss: https://www.example.com/rss
    series:
      - Pioneer One:
          # You can specify the desired quality using the quality option
          # Delete the following line if you want to grab the best quality
          quality: 480p 
      - Deadside:
          quality: 720p
    transmission:
      host: localhost
      port: 9091
      # The user and password must match the ones set in the GTK+ interface
      username: someuser 
      password: somepassword 

Basically, this configuration file allows FlexGet to periodically grab the specified content (i.e. new episodes of Deadside and Pioneer One) from the RSS feed. When FlexGet detects new content (i.e. new RSS entries), it will automatically download it through Transmission.

In this example, we will edit the aforementioned code to enable the email plugin for FlexGet. To use the email plugin, you need a working email account (Gmail or Yahoo).

Gmail Configuration:

  email:
    from: from@gmail.com
    to: to@gmail.com
    smtp_host: smtp.gmail.com
    smtp_port: 587
    # Replace USER/PASSWORD with your Gmail username & password respectively
    smtp_username: USER
    smtp_password: PASSWORD
    smtp_tls: yes
    smtp_ssl: yes

Yahoo Configuration:

  email:
    from: from@yahoo.com
    to: to@yahoo.com
    smtp_host: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
    smtp_port: 465
    # Replace USER/PASSWORD with your Yahoo username & password respectively
    smtp_username: USER
    smtp_password: PASSWORD
    smtp_tls: yes
    smtp_ssl: yes

Final Configuration File:

If we add the email settings to the configuration file, the final result would look something like this:

tasks:
  my task:
    rss: https://www.example.com/rss
    series:
      - Pioneer One:
          # You can specify the desired quality using the quality option
          # Delete the following line if you want to grab the best quality
          quality: 480p 
      - Deadside:
          quality: 720p
    transmission:
      host: localhost
      port: 9091
      username: someuser 
      password: somepassword 
    email:
      from: from@yahoo.com
      to: to@yahoo.com
      smtp_host: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
      smtp_port: 465
      smtp_username: USER
      smtp_password: PASSWORD
      smtp_tls: yes
      smtp_ssl: yes

This configuration will allow FlexGet to send you email notifications each time new content is made available:

Bonus:

You can schedule your dowloads by adding FlexGet to your crontab list:

export EDITOR=nano
crontab -e

For example, to make FlexGet run in the background once a week, simply add the following line to your crontab list:

@weekly /usr/local/bin/flexget --cron

Various schedule options are available. To use them, simply replace @weekly with one of the following options:

string         meaning
------         -------
@reboot        Run once, at startup.
@yearly        Run once a year.
@annually      (same as @yearly).
@monthly       Run once a month.
@weekly        Run once a week.
@daily         Run once a day.
@midnight      (same as @daily).
@hourly        Run once an hour.

For more information about crontab, visit this page.