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Modbender

Command Line

Installing the package adds a tracker-scraper command. It’s the quickest way to check a torrent’s stats without writing any Python.

Scrape one torrent

Section titled “Scrape one torrent”
Terminal window
tracker-scraper udp://exodus.desync.com:6969 2d88e693eda7edf3c1fd0c48e8b99b8fd5a820b2
{
  "2d88e693eda7edf3c1fd0c48e8b99b8fd5a820b2": {
    "seeds": 34,
    "peers": 189,
    "complete": 10
  }
}

Scrape several at once

Section titled “Scrape several at once”

List multiple hashes after the tracker URL:

Terminal window
tracker-scraper udp://exodus.desync.com:6969 \
  2d88e693eda7edf3c1fd0c48e8b99b8fd5a820b2 \
  8929b29b83736ae650ee8152789559355275bd5c

Compact output

Section titled “Compact output”

The output is pretty-printed with an indent of 2 by default. Pass --indent 0 for compact JSON, handy when piping:

Terminal window
tracker-scraper --indent 0 udp://exodus.desync.com:6969 2d88e693eda7edf3c1fd0c48e8b99b8fd5a820b2

Pipe into other tools

Section titled “Pipe into other tools”

Because the output is plain JSON on stdout, you can pipe it straight into jq:

Terminal window
tracker-scraper udp://exodus.desync.com:6969 2d88e693eda7edf3c1fd0c48e8b99b8fd5a820b2 \
  | jq '.[].seeds'

Use the exit code in scripts

Section titled “Use the exit code in scripts”

The command exits 0 on success and 1 on failure (with the error written to stderr), so it composes cleanly in shell scripts:

Terminal window
if tracker-scraper udp://exodus.desync.com:6969 "$HASH" > stats.json; then
  echo "Scrape succeeded"
else
  echo "Scrape failed" >&2
fi

Run it as a module

Section titled “Run it as a module”

If the console script isn’t on your PATH, the same tool runs via -m:

Terminal window
python -m tracker_scraper udp://exodus.desync.com:6969 2d88e693eda7edf3c1fd0c48e8b99b8fd5a820b2

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”
  • Usage — the Python API behind the CLI.
  • Configuration — argument reference and protocol limits.