Plex Auto Collections is a Python 3 script/standalone builds that works off a configuration file to create/update Plex collection. Collection management with this tool can be automated in a varying degree of customizability. Supports IMDB and TMDb lists as well as built in Plex filters such as actors, genres, year, studio and more. For more filters refer to the plexapi.video.Movie documentation. Not everything has been tested, so results may vary based off the filter. A TMDb api key is required to scan TMDb URLs.

When parsing IMDB or TMBd lists the script will create a list of movies that are missing from Plex. If an TMDb and Radarr api-key are supplied then the option will be presented to pass the list of movies along to Radarr.

As well as updating collections based off configuration files there is the ability to add new collections based off filters, delete collections, search for collections and manage the collections in the configuration file. Collection poster and summary can also be managed with this script.

Thanks to /u/deva5610 for IMDBList2PlexCollection which prompted the idea for a configuration based collection manager.

Subfilters also allows for a little more granular selection of movies to add to a collection. Unlike regular filters, a movie must match at least one value from each subfilter to be added to a collection.

Modify the supplied config.yml.template file.

If using TMDb lists be sure to include your TMDb api-key. If you do not have an api-key please refer to this document.

If you do not want it to have the option to submit movies that are missing from IMDB or TMBd lists do not include the api-key for Radarr.

Adding a summary to the collection is possible by either pulling the overview from TMDb or by using a custom entry. To use a TMDb entry a TMDb api-key as well as language is required, the default language is set to en. Match the following in the configuration file, input only the TMDb collections page's ID. Use the actor's page ID on TMBd if you wish to use their biography as the summary.

Jurassic Park:
    tmdb-list: https://www.themoviedb.org/collection/328
    details:
        tmdb-summary: 328

If you would like to use a custom summary, enter as follows

Jurassic Park:
    tmdb-list: https://www.themoviedb.org/collection/328
    details:
        summary: A collection of Jurassic Park movies

Adding a poster can be done by adding the URL to the image.

Jurassic Park:
    tmdb-list: https://www.themoviedb.org/collection/328
    details:
        tmdb-summary: 328
        poster: https://i.imgur.com/QMjbyCX.png

Local assets are supported by running the script with the image server running. If there are no details filled out for the poster in the configuration file and the image server is running the script will attempt to match a collection name with an image file of the same name. Images should be placed in the ./images folder. Port forwarding is not required.

If you want movies to add to Radarr but not automatically search, change search to "false".

In order to find your Plex token follow this guide.

Library should be the name of the Plex library that you are wanting to search and create collections in.

Main filters allowed are actors, imdb-list as well as many attributes that can found in the plexapi.video.Movie documentation. In addition subfilters for audio language, subtitle language and video-resolution have been created. Take note that the values for each must match what Plex has including special characters in order to match.

subfilters:
    video-resolution: 1080 (further examples: sd, 720, 4k)
    audio-language: Français
    subtitle-language: English

If you do not want to use subfilters simply remove the section.

Once complete it should look like

collections:
    Jurassic Park:
        tmdb-list: https://www.themoviedb.org/collection/328
        details:
          tmdb-summary: 328
          poster: https://i.imgur.com/QMjbyCX.png
      1080p Documentaries:
        genres: Documentary
        subfilters:
          video-resolution: 1080
        details:
          summary: A collection of 1080p Documentaries
      Daniel Craig only James Bonds:
        imdb-list: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls006405458/
        subfilters:
          actors: Daniel Craig
plex:
    library: Movies
    token: ###################
    url: http://192.168.1.5:32400
radarr:
    url: http://192.168.1.5:7878/radarr/
    token: ###########################
    quality_profile_id: 4
    search: true
tmdb:
    apikey: ############################
    language: en
image-server:
    host: 192.168.1.41
    port: 5000

Standalone binaries have been created for both Windows and Linux.

If you would like to run from Python I have only tested this fully on Python 3.7.4. Dependencies must be installed by running

pip install -r requirements.txt

If there are issues installing PyYAML 1.5.4 try

pip install -r requirements.txt --ignore-installed

Make sure that plexapi is installed from the github source in requirements.txt. The one provided by pip contains a bug that will cause certain movies to crash the script when processing IMDB lists. To ensure that you are running the of plexapi check utils.py contains the following around line 172:

def toDatetime(value, format=None):
""" Returns a datetime object from the specified value.

    Parameters:
        value (str): value to return as a datetime
        format (str): Format to pass strftime (optional; if value is a str).
"""
if value and value is not None:
    if format:
        value = datetime.strptime(value, format)
    else:
        value = datetime.fromtimestamp(int(value))
return value

To run the script in a terminal run

python plex_auto_collections.py

If you would like to schedule the script to run on a schedule the script can be launched to automatically and only based off the collection and then quit by running. This applies to the standalones as well.

python plex_auto_collections.py --update

If you would like to not run the image server add the --noserver flag to the command

python plex_auto_collections.py --noserver