Transmission statisics via RPC/json/python

transmission-stats.py

#!/usr/bin/python 

# ideas lifted from bash collectd Plugin to monitor transmission-daemon traffic
# Written by Yarek T, however that was old and didn't play nice :-)
# Andrew Elwell. Jan 2012

from urllib2 import Request, urlopen, URLError, HTTPError
import json

# see https://trac.transmissionbt.com/browser/trunk/extras/rpc-spec.txt
endpoint = "http://localhost:9091/transmission/rpc"
sessid = ''

req = Request(endpoint)
req.add_header('x-transmission-session-id', sessid)

try: response = urlopen(req)
except HTTPError, e:
    # The 1st time this WILL fail as we haven't got session-id
    if (e.code == 409): # grab session-id
        sessid = e.hdrs['x-transmission-session-id']
        print "Updated session-id to %s" % sessid
    else:
        print 'The server couldn\'t fulfill the request.'
        print 'Error code: ', e.code
except URLError, e:
    print 'Failed to reach server.'
    print 'Reason: ', e.reason


# construct the JSON string
data = json.dumps({'method':'session-stats'})

# this time with feeling...
req = Request(endpoint)
req.add_header('x-transmission-session-id', sessid)
response = urlopen(req,data)
print json.dumps(json.loads(response.read()),indent=4)