AutoHotkey Community

Is there a way to check if a program is downloading? and if not then do something?
uTorrent for example

In utorrent: /Options/preferences/Directories/Move .torrents for finished jobs to:C:\downloadcomplete\

This will only move the .torrent descriptor file after a completed download, not the whole file

Thanks for the reply, but this is not what I need, I want to watch if a program is downloading, uTorrent was an example if someone wanted to try to help.

Try using Windows Spy to see if a Control changes text when the program is downloading.
You can then monitor the text of this control and act accordingly.

If there isn't a control which changes text you could also try getting the text from the window and parsing that to see when the priogram is downloading

from the command prompt: netstat -b and netstat -e give you statistics from traffic and ports used by programs, you could ahk RUN netstat -b >log.txt make logfiles and have ahk read the logfiles for inspection. Not easy job, but possible...

Oh Scratch.. That's too advanced for me, lol
Noob here

well to be honest, I havent done it before but i got a very crude example to work that sees if utorrent is active



just do a netstat when a program is downloading and check the logfile for recognizable string that you put where i put A_loopReadLine, (put your searchstring here)

The searchstring could also be a portnumber that the program uses when downloading or uploading a file.

Well.. I tried it and played around with it, its not really working..

-All I see in the log file is a list of Firefox, nothing else!
-And a command prompt pops up evertime and doesn't go away.

I thought detecting a program that's downloading is much easier than this

firefox shows up in the netlog all the time when active, on port 80, however i noticed when downloading and you do a netstat it uses port 443 as well, this can be your search string, you can add to close the command window

Change

to: to capture the portnumber to the logfile so that the log reads: blablabla.... firefox.exe:443 ...blablba...

But I don't see the other programs that ARE running AND downloading in that logfile

Eh!

what programs would that be? Not hidden trojan downloaders i hope

....or maybe the programs use UDP connections instead of TCP, do a netstat -p UDP > logfile1.txt during and after download, logfile2.txt and compare the logfiles if any udp connections were made and closed afterwards, these could become the searchcriteria then.

I don't see both (uTorrent and Newsleecher) and they are both running and downloading.

I tried to enter netstat -b manually in command prompt and watched command prompt box.. On enter I got Firefox, like 4 entries or so, then 30-40 seconds later it started giving me entries of uTorrent every 20 seconds or so, but no Newsleecher to be mentioned.

Weird!

if uTorrent is an example, Your gona need to tell us which program you actually want to monitor.. Since nothing reliable can be coded. Parsing netstat from the command link isnt efficient.

Agreed, netstat takes much longer time to write a logfile than i anticipated and a lot of hard to decipher spaghetti output....Better use a dedicate network monitor that triggers an external program when it detects the download port/protocol being used or idle

However, In Newsleecher, there is an option to configure the download queue to run a commandline program when the queue is empty, iow: not downloading.

http://www.binaries4all.com/newsleecher/downloading.php

This could be an ahk script or any executable of your choosing.

Also, i've found a freeware network monitor that allows triggering external programs depending on measured traffic (see proactive alarms)

http://www.objectplanet.com/probe/

These programs often assume more than average understanding of networking protocols, but if you watch carefully what happens during a download, with a little trial and error you should be able to assign a trigger to that without having in depth knowledge of whats being displayed...