Automation

Short description

The concept of automation is based on drawing up a plan of actions that will be carried out sequentially.

An action always has parameters (variables) that are supplied to the input and those that are obtained at the output as a result of performing the action. Actions are building blocks from which you make your plan.

Variables or parameters can be of different types. These can be links, files, or texts.

"Files" is a common type for files and for folders. Later, as a result of performing actions, there may be variables of the "files" type at the output, but already with the "folders" subtype. I.e., a specific class of "files" is specified.

"Texts" can be of two types, just texts and "posts". The posts will be displayed in the Automation posts viewer (see below), but there will be no simple texts. They can be used to send other actions to the input.

Description of interface elements
  1. Click on the "Automation" tab
  2. List of automation plans
  3. A list of actions in the selected automation plan
  4. The button for clearing successfully completed automation tasks
  5. The button for clearing automation tasks completed with errors
  6. Button for stopping active automation tasks
  7. The button for restarting automation tasks with errors
  8. The button for starting automation tasks with errors from the place where they were stopped
  9. The button for clearing automation tasks with the deletion of all temporary files created during execution
  10. Switch the number of automation tasks performed simultaneously in parallel
  11. The button for displaying ready-made posts
  12. List of current automation tasks
  13. The button allows you to view the contents of all parameters (variables) at the current moment of the task. Convenient for debugging
  14. The counter shows which action number the task of completing the automation plan is on. If an error occurs, you can use this counter to determine the action number in the plan where the error occurred.
  15. On the left side of each action, the parameters accepted by the action (submitted for input) are displayed.
  16. On the right side of each action, the final parameters (execution results) are displayed2024-06-03_174313.png
Adding actions to a plan

The first action in the plan determines the place where you can run it for execution.

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If the first action is to do "LOG IN: Links" (or "One link"), then you can launch this plan on the download tab of the service. The inserted download links will be transferred to the input of the first action of the plan.

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If the first action is to do "INPUT: Files" (or "One file"), then you can run this plan on the Files tab of the service. the selected files will be transferred to the input of the first action of the plan.

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Viewing automation results (posts)

If there was an action ‘generate text from template’ or ‘generate post from file history’ in the automation plan, the result of these actions can be viewed in a separate window when you click on the button in the form of a list.

Here you can select posts by the name of the automation plan. You can select a separator - text to be inserted between posts to separate them from each other. You can also choose the type of formatting of links separately for exchangers and for photo exchangers.

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List of actions

List of actions

Download links

If the first action in the automation plan is “INPUT: Links” or “INPUT: One Link”, then you can add the “Download Links” action. It will be necessary to select the links that were submitted for input and the folder where the files should be downloaded.

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List of actions

Select files

This action allows you to filter (select) from the input file list those files that meet the necessary conditions.

 

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Applying the ‘File Size’ filter

For this filter, you can write an expression with conditions regarding the file size, to select files according to their sizes.

The following variables can be used in the expression, which will be replaced by the corresponding numeric values

[file_sum] - the sum of all files passed to the action input
[file_max] - size of the largest file of all files passed to the action input
[file_min] - size of the smallest file of all files passed to the action input

[kB] - will be replaced by *1000 (converts kilobytes to bytes)
[KiB] - will be replaced by *1024 (converts kibibytes to bytes)
[MB] - will be replaced by *1000000 (converts megabytes to bytes)
[MiB] - will be replaced by *1048576 (converts mebibytes to bytes)
[GB] - will be replaced by *1000000000 (converts gigabytes to bytes)
[GiB] - to be replaced by *1073741824 (converts gigabytes to bytes)
[TB] - to be replaced by *1000000000000 (converts terabytes to bytes)
[TiB] - will be replaced by *1099511627776 (converts terabytes to bytes)

Since the expression is applied each time for only one file from the list, the variables [file_sum], [file_max], [file_min] will be the same and always equal to the size of the file being checked.

For example, the expression

[file_sum] > 1[GB]

Means: Select all files that are larger than 1 Gigabyte.

List of actions

Select in the folder

This action is similar to the action Select files except that the action input is not files, but a folder. The contents of the files are scanned and the files/folders in the folder are selected according to the selected conditions.

List of actions

Create a folder

A folder from the previous actions is input or manually selected from the file system. The name of the new folder is specified.

Output: New folder

List of actions

Create screenshots/screenlist

On entry:

Selects a profile Screenshot/Screenlist Generator

Output:

List of actions

Cut a sample from multimedia files

On entry:

A profile is selected for Video file cropper

Output:

 

List of actions

Multimedia converter

On entry:

The profile is selected Multimedia converter

On exit:

List of actions

Mediainfo template

On input:

Select profile for Mediainfo

On exit:

List of actions

Calculate MD5

On entry:

On output:

List of actions

Change MD5

On entry:

A random byte will be added to the end of the file

List of actions

Pack into a RAR archive

On entry:

files

RAR archiver profile is selected


On output:

Files -> RAR whole archives
Files -> RAR volume parts

List of actions

Pack into a ZIP archive

On entry:

ZIP archiver profile is selected


On output:

List of actions

Unpack archive

On entry:

Options:

Delete archives after unpacking
 Extract to the folder with the archive name
 File names like the archive

For a description of the options, see HERE

Output:

List of actions

Unpack to folder

On entry:

Options:

Delete archives after unpacking
 Extract to the folder with the archive name
 File names like the archive

For a description of the options, see HERE

Output:

List of actions

Bulk file renaming

Input:

The profile is selected from Bulk file renaming

Output:

 

List of actions

Move to another folder

Input:

Options:

Rename the copied file if there is already a file with the same name
Scan and transfer only files from selected folders
Move / copy

Description of options see here

Output:

List of actions

Remove files

Input:

It just deletes the files.

List of actions

Upload to the file exchanges

The automation uses the normal file upload function, so all the options available on the ‘upload’ tab are applicable to it. Namely, the number of restarts of unloading tasks in case of errors and the number of parallel tasks for unloading. They can be set there as well.

Input:

Options:

Output:

List of actions

File Search

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Searches for files by specified mask in selected folders. Returns the list of found files. If ‘recursive search’ option is enabled, searches inside subfolders recursively deep into directories.

List of actions

Generate text from a template

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It takes a list of files and a list of text variables as input and generates the output text according to a given pattern.

There are additional variables that can be used in the template:

Available variables:
{url} - inserts a direct link to the file
{file} - inserts file name with extension
{name} - inserts file name without extension
{folder} - inserts a folder name
{folder_fw} - inserts the first word of the folder name
{folder_bsp} - inserts text up to the first space in the parent folder name

If you switch on the option This is ordinal text, not post,then the received text will not be interpreted as a post, but just as another text variable and accordingly the content will not be shown in the post view window after the automation tasks are completed.