Programatically check if there are pending downloads

[EspinolaAbel]

Is there a way to check programatically if there are pending downloads?
I want to start qBittorrents on system startup ONLY if there are pending downloads. (I know that I can configure it to start always on system startup. I don't want that).
My idea was to write an OS script to check for a condition anywhere (reading logs, checking files or through cmd commands to qBittorrent.exe file) wheter there are unfinished downloads, but couldn't find that "hook" yet.

Any ideas?
Thanks

[thalieht]

An idea is to read all .fastresume files in BT_backup folder for completed_time to be 0 (download not finished yet) and for paused to also be 0. However this is prone to errors e.g completed_time won't be zero if you haven't selected a few files, the download has finished and then you decide to download some more.
Warning: dead, not paused torrents without metadata fit these conditions.

p.s. I don't know how you're going to read the .fastresume files.

[EspinolaAbel]

Thanks, I've been checking those files and .resume are mostly text based files so maybe sed could do the trick.
Although, as you said maybe they are not the best answer.
Another file in the same folder is 'queue' and holds in each line the hashes of each currently active downloads.
Maybe I'll just use that