RSS Hidden Filters Options?

[nymidas]

Hi,
Been using Altbinz for a couple years now and finally decided that it is time to contribute back and perhaps gain a few features on the RSS auto download side. As I’ve been using this and the RSS side for quite a long time I am well acquainted with the wiki https://www.altbinz.net/wiki/Main_Page#Using_RSS_Feeds_and_Filters entry. What I’m not sure about is the extra RSS criteria that I could be using to further optimize my RSS filters.  I have come across a post that mentions features that are not written in the wiki and I am wondering if there are any more that I missed.

Thread: https://www.altbinz.net/forum/closed-requests/rss-the-next-step/

F - overrides global rss feed settings and adds collection as first
P - overrides global rss feed settings and adds collection as paused
R - overrides global rss feed settings and tries to guess collection name

Could you elaborate what R does with an example of how it is used? P and F are obvious but I’m not sure what is meant by trying to guess a collection name. Is there any other RSS Filter options not mentioned in the wiki that would be handy?

Thanks in advanced!

[Hecks]

Someone needs to update the wiki. Are you volunteering? Excellent!

If you click the Filters button on one of the RSS tabs, you'll notice  buttons that appear at the top of the filters panel. Hover over them to see the tooltips for the global settings that F, P and R override. Click the ? button for filters Help.

[nymidas]

Thanks for the prompt reply, you can tell I haven’t really played with the new version that much yet!

Is there a possibility that there will be a “Required” option put in future releases? Reason I ask is this filter option is available in sabnzb and has proven rather handy when trying to sort the bad posters from the good.

For example:

A random rss feed:

[john@channel] good show part 1
[unknown@nowhere] good show part 1
[peter@channel] good show part 2
[unknown@nowhere] good show part 2


Usual filter:

*good show* | A


Now usually it would download all of the above as it meets the criteria but usually only the releases from @channel are even worth the trouble without worrying about passwords etc. If there was a switch that would make a certain filter mandatory (required), this would help sort them out when working with over 30+ filters.

For example:

*@channel* | M     ;M for mandatory (must have *@channel* or it will deny)
*good show* | A    ;usual filter

Of course adding *@channel*good show* is what I use currently but it seems a tad repetitive and rather messy when using a lot of filters.

[Hecks]

Well, anything is possible in principle and that's what the Requests forum is for.   I guess in your example, 'Mandatory' would be the equivalent to a tweak to the Deny options, to deny when a string isn't present, say with a ! switch, !*@channel* | D.

There are indeed limitations to a filter system that only applies to subject lines and can't, for example, make use of other fields (e.g. Description often contains valuable info for potential filtering).

BUT increasingly I think there's an expectation that sites will handle most of the heavy lifting through their RSS or API options. In general, I would say that Alt.Binz filters work best when they're applied as a final 'cleanup' stage for highly customised RSS urls. This is obviously much easier now that we have multiple RSS feed support in Alt.Binz.

So in your example, I would look for and use a site that allowed me to add a search filter to the RSS url, and create a new RSS entry for Alt.Binz (e.g. blah_rss.php?search=@channel).

So basically aim for more RSS urls with shorter filter lists rather than trying to squeeze everything into one. There will be a range of views here about that.

TL;DR - The best filter to aim for is this one:

* | A