SukiMatic Documentation

Version 1.0

J. "Tefal" Ruffin, last updated 05-23-2004

About SukiMatic
Installation
Running the program
Config file syntax
Homepage and contact information

1. About SukiMatic

Excerpt from the original web page :

This small command line java app parses AnimeSuki's XML feed and searches it for new anime releases with a pattern defined in its configuration file. Once this is done, the .torrent files associated with the new releases are downloaded to the directory you want. When used with BitTorrent clients like Azureus that can automatically download all files associated to .torrents in a directory, downloading new releases becomes a near fully-automatic process.

(Watching them all, however, is still something that needs to be done by a human being to remain fun ^^;)

This program is Free Software licensed under the GNU General Public License, mainly meaning you are free (and encouraged) to modify and/or redistribute it.

2. Installation

Prior warning : as this is a java program, you need to have a working JVM installed. Windows users should use the Java Runtime Environment (J2SE JRE), Mac OS X users normally have a JRE installed with the system, and GNU/Linux users should be aware that the program has been tested on Blackdown JDK 1.4.1.

Things are pretty straightforward - copy the program in the folder you want, then open config.xml and set the <directory> attribute to the directory you want your .torrent files saved to. You then have to list the series you want the program to look for, which is done using XML code in the same file. Look at the comments included in the file and below for more details on how to do this.

3. Running the program

Mac OS X, GNU/Linux users : go into the program directory and run the sukimatic [parameters] shell script or type

java -classpath ./classes SukiMatic [parameters]

in a terminal.

Windows users : you can use either the

java -classpath .\classes SukiMatic [parameters]

command in the program directory under the DOS console, or simply run the included sukimatic.bat.

SukiMatic accepts the following command line parameters:

-h or --help

Print a summary of available commandline parameters.

-a [time] or --auto [time]

Automatically check for new releases at the given interval in minutes.
The default interval is 15 minutes, and you can precise non-decimal intervals (ie. 0.5 minutes). This makes the program run in a loop - to exit it, press CTRL-C. (I know, this is completely unelegant ¬_¬;)

-q or --quiet

Run in silent mode. Suppresses all output messages, except the first one (to confirm the program's been launched). Useful if you're working in a shell with the program in the background and don't want it to interfere with whathever you're doing.

-u [url] or --url [url]

Override the URL written in the configuration file, should you want to read another XML feed written with AnimeSuki's XML format (one never knows...)

-d [directory] or --directory [directory]

Override the .torrent save directory written in the configuration file, to temporarily save .torrent files elsewhere.

c [configfile] or --config [configfile]

Set the path to the configuration file. The default is config.xml, and be warned the current version of the program will most likely crash if it doesn't find a config file.

4. Config file syntax

The typical config.xml file looks like this :

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<sukimatic version="1.0">
    <directory></directory>
    <url>http://www.animesuki.com/xml.php</url>
    <series>
        <title>Gunslinger Girl</title>
        <group>Anime Fin</group>
    </series>
    <series>
        <title>Madlax</title>
        <group>ANBU</group>
    </series>
</sukimatic>

The list of XML tags that are used is :

<directory> : contains the path to the directory where .torrent files are saved. If the tag is not present or if it contains no path, it is set to the program's directory.
<url> : contains the URL of AnimeSuki's XML feed. Set at http://www.animesuki.com/xml.php if the tag is not present or empty.
<series> : sets a new series to look for. The content of a <series> tag must include the two following properties :
<title> : the series' title, case-sensitive (you have to type it exactly, as displayed on AnimeSuki)
<group> : the series' group long name, case-sensitive (same as above, it has to be the exact one). Multi-group releases just need to include the name of one group.

5. Homepage and contact information

SukiMatic's homepage can be found at http://www.tefal.free.fr/sukimatic/.

For comments, suggestions, ideas, or submitting bugfixes or patches, mail me at jruffinch@hotmail.com.

That's it. I hope you'll enjoy this piece of code crufted by a beginning programmer - I originally wrote this for my own use, and I was quite surprised to see not many people at AnimeSuki had taken advantage of such a powerful tool as XML.

See you, space cowboy...