qBittorrent: Saves category for watched directories (https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/wiki/External-programs:-savecategory)

savecategory.md

This script add Categories to Automatically add torrents from per Monitored Folder

👉 This script is in flux, as it may be implemented into qBittorrent in the future.

savecategory expects the user's watch directories to look similar to something like this:

It's based off Docker guide for setting up hard links between virtual volumes (Docker) and machine volumes.

Installation

Save the script below as savecategory and make it executable via chmod 755 /path/to/savecategory.

#!/bin/sh

category="$(basename $1)"
torrent_hash="$2"
torrent_name="$3"
host="http://localhost:8112"
username="admin"
password="adminadmin"

echo "running savecategory script"

echo "\tgetting cookie"

cookie=$(curl --silent --fail --show-error \
    --header "Referer: $host" \
    --cookie-jar - \
    --data "username=$username&password=$password" \
    --request POST "$host/api/v2/auth/login")

if [ -z "$cookie" ]; then
    echo "Login failed, exiting script."
    exit 1
fi

echo "\tsetting $torrent_name to category $category"

echo "$cookie" | curl --silent --fail --show-error \
    --cookie - \
    --header "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
    --data "hashes=$torrent_hash&category=$category" \
    --request POST "$host/api/v2/torrents/setCategory"

echo "completed savecategory script"

exit 0

ℹ️ Make sure to replace the username and password with your credentials before using or else this will not work. Another caveat is that if your password contains # or &, you'll need to replace with ASCII encoded characters.

🔗 gist for potential script changes or comments.

And set Run external program on torrent completion to:

/path/to/savecategory "%D" "%I" "%N"

On completion, the category will change based on the directory name the .torrent file was placed in the watch directory.

Hi, the above mentionned most recent script fails with qBittorrent v4.6.7 Web UI (32-bit). Following current (qBittorrent 4.1) API documentation, here's a slightly improved version that fixes the various issues and:

• checks if the API cookie is properly given
• checks if the desired category exists based on the Save path (Override Save Location)
• automatically creates the categorie based on the Save path (Override Save Location) if the category doesn't exist

Since the categories route returns JSON data format, jq is required to perform proper JSONPATH.

Not tested with qBittorrent v5.

#!/bin/sh

# Script using qBittorrent APIv2 to set a torrent in the desired directory based on the Save path
# Requirements: jq, curl, grep, awk

CATEGORY="$(basename $1)"
TORRENT_HASH="$2"
TORRENT_NAME="$3"
HOST="http://localhost:8080" # Note the API is hosted on the same port as the WebUI
USERNAME="admin" # Username used to login to the WebUI/API
PASSWORD="somepassword" # Password used to login to the WebUI/API

API_COOKIE=$(curl --silent --fail --show-error \
    --header "Referer: $HOST" \
        --cookie-jar - \
        --data "username=$USERNAME&password=$PASSWORD" \
        "$HOST/api/v2/auth/login")

if ! echo "$API_COOKIE" | grep -q "SID"; then
    echo "savecategory: Error, login failed to API, exiting script."
    exit 1
fi

API_COOKIE=$(echo "$API_COOKIE" | grep "SID" | awk '{print $NF}')

CATEGORY_EXISTS=$(curl --silent --fail --show-error \
    --cookie "SID=$API_COOKIE" \
    --request GET \
    "$HOST/api/v2/torrents/categories" | jq -r ". | has(\"$CATEGORY\")")

if [ "$CATEGORY_EXISTS" = "false" ]; then
    echo "Savecategory: Creating category $CATEGORY"

    curl --silent --fail --show-error \
        --cookie "SID=$API_COOKIE" \
        --header "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
        --data "category=$CATEGORY&savePath=$1" \
        "$HOST/api/v2/torrents/createCategory"
fi

curl --silent --fail --show-error \
    --cookie "SID=$API_COOKIE" \
    --header "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
    --data "hashes=$TORRENT_HASH&category=$CATEGORY" \
    "$HOST/api/v2/torrents/setCategory"

echo "$CATEGORY category has now $TORRENT_NAME"

exit 0