How to use emule collection files in mlDonkey

Well, this is not a plugin, neither a standalone or cross-platform application, it’s only a, well, I suppose we can call it workaround…

Emule collections are files used to store the ed2k link of one or (usually) more files. They can be in two different format, text or byte.

In the lucky case we have a text based emule collection file and we want to start downloading with mlDonkey all the files linked in it, we have only to copy the content of the file and paste it in the “Direct Link” window of mlDonkey (the one that is shown clicking on “DL” on the top menu, yep, that one). In fact this window let us to start downloading all the links we write in it, one for line.

Unfortunately, in most cases the files we find on the net are not text-based. In fact when we open them with a text editor we see a lot of strange characters. These files store more information about each file (have a look here if you are curious). We don’t need so much data, so the idea is to extract from the file the only one thing we need: the ed2k link of each file. We can do that with the source code of the amule-emc plugin. This plugin is used by amule exactly for reading emule collection files and using them in the application.

First of all we need the amule plugin code, we can download it from here: amule-emc download list. I used with the version 0.5.2, the last at the moment. Unpack the archive somewhere and open the plugin folder. We need only some source files, so enter the source folder and compile them with g++ as follows:

cd amule-emc-x.x.x/src/
g++ MuleCollection.cpp amule-emc.cpp -o ed2k_exporter

The amule-emc.cpp file has a main function that reads the file passed as first argument and lists all the links. So now we can execute our new application simply with

./ed2k_exporter filename.emulecollection

where obviously we have to replace “filename.emulecollection” with our file. The result is that we will have all the links printed in our terminal, so the only thing we have to do now is to copy them and use the “Direct Link” window of mlDonkey, as before.