Program to download .torrent file from a Magnet URI?

Question

I have a Torrent app running on my home server that has an outdated but pretty useful web interface. The one problem is that it doesn't take magnet links, only .torrent files. I'd like to continue using this and not have to bother with finding a different program.

Given that magnet links are just a pointer to download the torrent file from the swarm, I'm hoping there's a program out there that will take a magnet link and spit out a .torrent only. I know I could put it into µTorrent and grab the file from the app's directory, but that's a bit roundabout, and I'd like something that will do it semi-unattented. Preferably for OS X, but Linux (or a web app) would work too.

Answer 1

In order to do this, you would pretty much have to do it the roundabout way. A magnet link downloads the .torrent file by torrenting it from the peers, as you've said, so you would basically need a torrenting app to get this done. This could be avoided if there is a site that runs the magnet, downloads the torrent and then hosts it for downloading, but I don't know of any such site.

Answer 2

I solved this not the way I was expecting, but rather I came across sites that cache most publicly available torrents, and provide access to them via the Magnet URI hash. It's fairly easy to create a simple macro to generate a URL from one of these sites for any given torrent (in my experience they don't seem to have a 100% cache rate, but between two or three of them, you can find anything from The Pirate Bay).

The ones I've come across all use the open source Torrage code, and include Torrage.com, Torcache.net and Zoink.it.

Answer 3

Yes, for example torrent-infohash. Install Go, and go get github.com/anacrolix/torrent/cmd/magnet-metainfo. Then execute it:

"$GOBIN"/magnet-metainfo "$MAGNET_URI"

The torrent file is downloaded via DHT to the working directory.