This is a simple Python script which should run well on any Debian-based OS, but was designed on a Raspberry Pi.

You can change mirrors by changing the src and suf to whatever URL you want, but only if they use non-formatted issue numbers. (e.g. http://www.example.com/the-magpi-issue-1.pdf as opposed to /the-magpi-issue-01.pdf)

I would recommend setting it up to a cron job that runs monthly.

I currently have mine set up to run every day of the second week of every month. To do that, just type sudo crontab -e, then add these lines to the file:

0 12 7 * * python <PATH TO YOUR MAGPI>/magpi/magpidl.py
0 12 8 * * python <PATH TO YOUR MAGPI>/magpi/magpidl.py
0 12 9 * * python <PATH TO YOUR MAGPI>/magpi/magpidl.py
0 12 10 * * python <PATH TO YOUR MAGPI>/magpi/magpidl.py
0 12 11 * * python <PATH TO YOUR MAGPI>/magpi/magpidl.py
0 12 12 * * python <PATH TO YOUR MAGPI>/magpi/magpidl.py
0 12 13 * * python <PATH TO YOUR MAGPI>/magpi/magpidl.py

If that is wrong, someone please let me know!

TODO:

• The program is not currently pure Python. I had trouble getting urllib2 to work right. Specifically, I could not get the response handler (line 52) to write to newIssue (line 63). I was getting an error. You can try it for yourself by uncommenting lines 62-64 and running it.