Article Bot

[DFence]

No it is not the feed. I used the other RSS hack and it works fine. That hack has other problems which is why I went to this one.

ideas?

Yes, and I've tried it with approximately 20 common Feeds. Everytime the same error. It's strange that some users don't have any problems and some have this error. It could be a server configuration problem but I've no idea where to start. I'm thinking about following next steps:

1. Perhaps one of the usere where this hack works fine can provide me with a phpinfo() File of his server to compare with mine.

2. I'll try to enter one RSS Feed manually into the database to specify the problem if it's even server related or is there a problem with the Hack Administration File.

Unfortunately I can't do it until this evening (Swiss Time :)) because I don't have ftp access at work.

I really think this is a very great hack and would be glad if we can localize and solve this problem as soon as possible!

regards
DFence

[roundhost]

Well i still cant get the cron to let it work so i have to click it manually :( It has a headers allready sent problem! :(

[TCB]

This really is one amazing hack! Thanks a million :D

Currently the <title>, <description> and <link> are shown in the thread, but is it also possible to show extra fields, or the manually add the standard thread that is used to parse the data in?

[RS25com]

I am still getting this error:

Error: There is no file located at http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/cgi-bin/search?areaID=10&subAreaID=0&query=fixer&cat=rfs&minAsk=min&maxAsk=max&format=rss


I believe this issue has not been fully addressed yet. Can anyone shed some light or should I just ditch this and find something else?

[Holidazed]

No it is not the feed. I used the other RSS hack and it works fine. That hack has other problems which is why I went to this one.

ideas?
Well? Any ideas?

[RetroDreams]

What I'd really like to see happen with this is two things.

a) The news posts don't count towards user post total. Although the forum properties are set to it, it still posts towards the total amount.

b) Automatically prune the news after X amount of posts.

Although I realize no one is innovating on this script, I hope there is a chance.
Yep, my members officially started complaining today and thus, PaperBoy (the Articlebot) became no more.

I would like to re-enabled this, but until features like above are added, I just can't do it.

Great, great hack though.

[DFence]

1. Perhaps one of the usere where this hack works fine can provide me with a phpinfo() File of his server to compare with mine.

No one has already contacted me. Please can someone who's article bot installation is running well provide me with a phpinfo(); output of his server to compare with mine?

2. I'll try to enter one RSS Feed manually into the database to specify the problem if it's even server related or is there a problem with the Hack Administration File.

Doesn't change anything. I do have the rss url in the database but nothing happens at all. even with manually calling articlebot.php...

[ambrosious]

**clicks uninstall**

[RS25com]

Yes, I am still waiting for support... otherwise I'll have to uninstall as well. Too bad, it seems like an excellent script otherwise. :(

[N00BIE]

** Also Uninstalls **

[venomx]

Small thing I dont like... For some reason the acrticle bots drop down in the admincp is above the one forthe vb options... I will change this next time I am in the ftp but just wanted to let others know if they are just now installing this....

[venomx]

Doh this isnt working and I dont get an error..... :(
Even if I load articlebot.php in IE nothing.. :(
If someone has a good RSS feed url can you post it please so I can see if thats the problem...

[venomx]

Wow I Edited the articlebot.php to remove the last / from my absolute server path to forums, e.g. /home/cjohn/public_html/forums instead of /home/cjohn/public_html/forums/ and set the bot to get the new news every one minute and tried the articlebot.php in IE and it worked!

Only one problem. I use uCash/uShop and I have it set to pay 1 point per post and it was not paying the bot for it BUT did pay the bot for the thread view when I viewed it....

Post counts/views all seem fine...

Wish UCash had a way of not paying certain usergroups.. :(

[roundhost]

It WAS working great, posted fine for a few days, then THIS HAPPENED:

Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #2 is not an array in /home/vbforum/public_html/includes/init.php on line 517

Unable to add cookies, header already sent.
File: /home/vbforum/public_html/includes/init.php
Line: 517

I use Vbulletin 3.0.3.

WHAT TO DO?????

[Holidazed]

**Also clicks uninstall**

[venomx]

Hmmm the last post on the forum home isnt updated.. :(

[Beermonster]

I couldn't get it to post, I think the problem was with the Post Icon, all mine had the No1. so I gave them all new numbers and it seems to work now :)

* Beermonster clicks install

[venomx]

Anyone else that got it to work on VB3.0.3 having the same problem as me?
I have 1 bot pulling Yahoos feed. It posts 3 threads every 7 hours.

Example:
On the forum home it says yahoo First News title

But if you open that forum the last one posted is yahoo 3rd news title.

[we_are_borg]

<font color="Red">We are Borg clicks uninstall</font>

[Erwin]

Mmm... doesn't work.

To undo the database changes, run these queries:


DROP table `articlebot`;

DROP table `articlebot_rss`;

DROP table `articlebot_rss_cache`;

ALTER table `thread` DROP `is_rss`;

[Zoints]

Fixed. NM :)

[Megareus Rex]

** uninstalls **

The support for this hack is crap. Pure, utter crap. The damn thing STILL refuses to even let me set RSS feeds to the bots.

[venomx]

Works great here just one small problem thats really not wortth uninstalling.

[Natch]

I just love the reaction of these people who suffer from PICNIC issues, and then compain that it's an issue related to the coder, not the user ...

[Maikeru]

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (junk after document element at line 88, column 6) in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 136

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 140
i got rid of all the yahoo rss feeds, which was the problem i thought, and i got this.

i'm pretty sure velocd isnt giving support for the hack, so someone else please help.

[venomx]

PICNIC issues?


Also I use this feed...
http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories

Works wonders. Just wish the forumhome updated right

[Natch]

PICNIC, probelm in chair, not in computer.

FYI: I have this working, no problems with Slashdot feeds, and the AListApart feed... I have disabled the finding of the feed items in the search cos my members were getting annoyed at having to browse thru News items to find posts, and they don't appear on my portal for the same reason, but this is be my choice.

I haven't had a problem with this - if there is a problem with a particular type of feed, then mayube it's a feed unsupported by Magpie (as outlined by VeloCD earlier in the thread)...

Additionally, it's useful if anyone is going to support this if they can be told what feeds are and are not working ...

venomx - what problems are you having with it?

[venomx]

I have it set to check every 7 hours for new news. Then post a max of 5 of them.

It posts show up like this when I open that forum....
[Yahoo] Kerry Acts to Refocus Iraq Debate (washingtonpost.com)
[Yahoo] Bush Plan Draws on Advice of 9/11 Panel (washingtonpost.com)
[Yahoo] U.S. Hid Dozens of Iraqi Prisoners, Investigators Say (Reuters)
[Yahoo] U.S. Forces on Offensive in Iraq, Taunted by Al Qaeda (Reuters)

When I view the homepage it says
[Yahoo] U.S. Forces on Offensive in Iraq, Taunted by Al Qaeda (Reuters)
was the last post made when it wasnt... The Kerry one was the last post...
Nothing major really...

[Natch]

I tried to look into your website, but it linked to a search page - can you link me to the site so I can see the issue ?

[venomx]

I PM'ed the link to you so you can look. The site is way from being done and I am trying to keep people from visiting it. :)

[Erwin]

PICNIC, probelm in chair, not in computer.

I LIKE it. :) Very cool acronym.

[Natch]

I LIKE it. :) Very cool acronym.
It's a little nicer than referring to the ID 10 T errors ;)

[Natch]

Back on topic ;)

I've taken a look at this issue referred to by venomx and it's related to the instantaneous posting of multiple articles...

So: I'm intending on modifying the hack to cause the ArticleBot's to post with at least a 1 second separation between the items so there are no posts with identical timestamps.

[Natch]

OK - this will not work on Windows server prior to PHP5...

In articlebot/articlebot.php, Find:
if (++$count >= $articlebot['fetchlimit'])
break;
}

$nextpost = TIMENOW + ($articlebot['postinterval'] * 60);
Insert ABOVE:
usleep(500); // sleep for 500 u-seconds to provide unique post time - NOT WORK ON WINDOWS PRIOR TO PHP5

[mobilephonegame]

gr8 bit of coding, works really well :-) good job.!

Just a quick question...

I have everything set up fine on vb 3.03, and it pulls news from various feeds, but im now wanting to retreive via rss2, but looking at the rss2 url the varible "description" has been replaced with <content:encoded>

when i set the feed to rss2 it doesnt pull the short description, as the description tag has changed to <content:encoded> on the rss2 page and therefore on the posts, it then only adds the title & the link to the article.

is there any way to amend or add to the coding, so that i pulls <content:encoded> instead of, or aswell as <description> .? this way i can have the full post showing on my site when i select rss2 feeds, and not a short line of text etc....can this be done via the template.? or does it have to be code added to articlebot.php etc>?

any assist here would be gr8 folks.

Regards
Nick

[mobilephonegame]

anyone got a clue.? or has support ended for this hack.?

its supposed to be complient with RSS 2 but doesnt seem to be :surprised:

[venomx]

Nope the usleep(500); didnt work for me.. :(

[RetroDreams]

Yep, my members officially started complaining today and thus, PaperBoy (the Articlebot) became no more.

I would like to re-enabled this, but until features like above are added, I just can't do it.

Great, great hack though.
Anyone found a way to keep Articlebot posts from spamming recent threads, and being returned when searching the forums via "New Posts"?

I'd love to re-enable this.

[Ceroc]

I have messed-up somewhere along the line as it is not working.

My webhost is running windows server and task scheduler is used instead of cron. So I have placed an include once in my index.php file and in articlebot.php commented out:
chdir('/path/to/forums/');
require_once './global.php';

I then created an Article Bot user who should search for the rss feed:
http://news.yahoo.com/rss/

And set the post interval to 1 min and waited. So far nothing has been posted.

In my article bot manager the next feed is due at 7:01 am (despite having set the interval to 1 mins) and although I installed it last night, and 7:01 am has been and gone still there are no posts.

I must have missed something in "Routinizing your article bots" but have checked and re-checked.

Any thoughts?

[mobilephonegame]

I have messed-up somewhere along the line as it is not working.

My webhost is running windows server and task scheduler is used instead of cron. So I have placed an include once in my index.php file and in articlebot.php commented out:
chdir('/path/to/forums/');
require_once './global.php';

I then created an Article Bot user who should search for the rss feed:
http://news.yahoo.com/rss/

And set the post interval to 1 min and waited. So far nothing has been posted.

In my article bot manager the next feed is due at 7:01 am (despite having set the interval to 1 mins) and although I installed it last night, and 7:01 am has been and gone still there are no posts.

I must have missed something in "Routinizing your article bots" but have checked and re-checked.

Any thoughts?

you need to send it to a specific rss url i.e http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories

any assist with rss2 not working.??

[Ceroc]

you need to send it to a specific rss url i.e http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories
Thanks for the help. But I am getting a number of other errors now:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: html_entity_decode()

So I think it will just have to go onto the backburner until I have more time to configure it.

[mobilephonegame]

try attached.
just add your own server paths etc, and upload again :-)

then add an rss feed for the bot, try this as it works on ours

http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/uk/rss091.xml

and make sure a forum is allocated for posts etc, and permissions set so reg user/bot can post etc

dont forget to add a template to the style you are using so that the post shows correctly..i.e

add template to current style, with the following

title: articlebot_post

template:
$article[description] $article[link]



see if that works

[Ceroc]

try attached.
Thankyou. I am no longer getting the error message, but I am also not getting any news.

I am not using a crontab (don't know how :o ) so am calling the ArticleBot via:

include_once './articlebot/articlebot.php';

On the index.php page.

When doing this I am suppose to comment out

//chdir('/home/public_html/forums/');
//require_once './global.php';

Or is this why I am not getting any feeds.

[Dez_U]

getting this error messages all over my forum

Warning: main(./articlebot/articlebot.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/index.php on line 419

Warning: main(): Failed opening './articlebot/articlebot.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/index.php on line 419

Warning: Unknown(./articlebot/articlebot.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/includes/functions.php(1955) : eval()'d code on line 1

Warning: (null)(): Failed opening './articlebot/articlebot.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/includes/functions.php(1955) : eval()'d code on line 1

[skorzguy]

I tried installing the Article bot for a while and can't get it to work. I would install using crotab but I don't know how to do this. It looks fine when I installed Article bot but it will not save any feeds and shows them as not valid in my admin panel.

Does one need to have the fopen wrapper on on the server. I need someone to install this hack for me using the crotab method, I will pay. contact me at SkorzGuy@allstarchat.com

[mobilephonegame]

ok i have this installed and running fine for rss feeds (see www.sellersforum.co.uk) live news etc...

but....the coding should accept rss2 type feeds..., but when i set them to rss2 it posts the title & link only..

it does this because rss text is inside "<description> </description>" tags

but rss2 is inside "<content:encoded> </content:encoded>

is there anyway, i could make it receive posts from rss2 i.e include text within <content:encoded> if so which files need editing.?

its supposed to be compatible with rss2, and may just need a small tweak, but im lost here folks, any point in the right direction would be gr8 :ermm:

[bjornstrom]

I installed the Articlebot without problems and it works like a charm. Incredible!

I would like to make a contribuion to the programmer, anyone with a paypal link?

/Martin

[mobilephonegame]

well ours works like a charm apart from not receiving rss2 feeds (like its supposed to do lol)

ive tried adding content:encoded to the template to see if thats why it wasnt adding the text/post etc, but nope, that just makes more errors... o well...

im running out of ideas, and might have to call on an experienced coder to help me out....

so have you tried retrieving rss2 feeds>? do they show ok.? i.s full text etc not just one line...

[DanGarion]

I would love this to work, but I get a blank page at the articlebot.php page and I get these errors.

Mon Sep 13 14:16:35 2004] [error] PHP Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/theprcco/public_html/vb/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141
[Mon Sep 13 14:16:35 2004] [error] PHP Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/theprcco/public_html/vb/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137
[Mon Sep 13 14:16:35 2004] [error] PHP Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to fetch http://uo.stratics.com/php-bin/rss/raw.php. (HTTP Response: ) in /home/theprcco/public_html/vb/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

[Robert Basil]

Running this via cron job.

Everything is running fine except I get the message titles posted ok, but nothing is posted in the message body (no link to the full article or description at all).

Yes I've added the articlebot_post template.

I've tried this with a bunch of different feeds with no luck. (Yes, I checked the feeds and they include a link and description)

Anyone else have this problem and come up with a solution?

[Robert Basil]

I should mention that I have the same exact problem no matter what version of RSS feed I use and I also have the same problem when pulling from an Atom feed on my personal blog.

It's probably something right in front of my face, but I can't seem to find the problem.

[Robert Basil]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/uk/rss091.xml

Since this feed works on your forum I tried it on mine and still have the same problem as above.

I even tried changing the bot from it's own user to my account and still have the same problem.

I'm running out of ideas to get this working and am about to call it quits.

[Robert Basil]

I just read through all 21 pages and don't see anyone with the same problem.

I am wondering where the articlebot_post template is supposed to grab the "description" and "link" variables from as I searched through the articlebot, articlebot_rss and articlebot_rss_cache tables and do not see those variables anywhere.

Maybe this is my problem?

[Robert Basil]

Someone? Anyone?

[mobilephonegame]

Someone? Anyone?

I know this might sound silly....but have u added the articlebot_post template to all styles being used by the board.?

i.e we use default template with another theme integrated, therefore we had to add the template to both styles for it to show on the forum etc :-)

[mobilephonegame]

I just read through all 21 pages and don't see anyone with the same problem.

I am wondering where the articlebot_post template is supposed to grab the "description" and "link" variables from as I searched through the articlebot, articlebot_rss and articlebot_rss_cache tables and do not see those variables anywhere.

Maybe this is my problem?

think the coding is in articlebot_parse & articlebot_fetch :-)

[puredj]

Nice hack! I installed it myself...

Ooh by the way, you can change this:

chdir('/path/to/forums/');


to:


chdir(dirname(dirname(__FILE__)).'/');


Then you don't have to set the path (in case you don't know the exact path)

[buro9]

I installed the Articlebot without problems and it works like a charm. Incredible!

I would like to make a contribuion to the programmer, anyone with a paypal link?

/Martin

Count me in on that... very nice and just what I was looking for.

Also, for anyone that wants to do email2rss, try this:
http://wonko.com/software/mailfeed/

Works a stunner, much better than mailbucket (which truncates messages).

Only criticism for Article Bot is the lack of feedback on what it's doing when you're debugging, but that's minor as reading the code and adding some echoes is not a problem :)

[Robert Basil]

I know this might sound silly....but have u added the articlebot_post template to all styles being used by the board.?

i.e we use default template with another theme integrated, therefore we had to add the template to both styles for it to show on the forum etc :-)

We have our default style (and a mobile style for me when I am on the road) and it's added to both of them. :)

[puredj]

getting this error messages all over my forum

Warning: main(./articlebot/articlebot.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/index.php on line 419

Warning: main(): Failed opening './articlebot/articlebot.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/index.php on line 419

Warning: Unknown(./articlebot/articlebot.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/includes/functions.php(1955) : eval()'d code on line 1

Warning: (null)(): Failed opening './articlebot/articlebot.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/includes/functions.php(1955) : eval()'d code on line 1

see my post before,
change in articlebot.php


chdir('/path/to/forums/');


to:


chdir(dirname(dirname(__FILE__)).'/');

[Robert Basil]

Ok, it seems to be working. A new article showed up. But it does not give me a link to the full article? See for yourself.

http://www.dungeonkeepersdomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1387

Help?

I am having the EXACT same problem as bitg. And from the looks of it, he didn't find a resolution either.

[Robert Basil]

I know this is going to sound like +++++ing (and I guess it is) but come on. I know the author of this hack has a life (as do we all) but how can a hack that is having so many problems and no support for the last few weeks from the author be considered for a "Hack of the Month?"

[puredj]

I am having the EXACT same problem as bitg. And from the looks of it, he didn't find a resolution either.

Did you make the articlebot_post template, this controls the link.

$article[link]

That's for the link at the botom.

The other option is, that the source doesn't have a link propertie in there html.
Try to open the source xml (where you get the articles) with your browser and see if every news item has a <link> </link> propertie

[Robert Basil]

Did you make the articlebot_post template, this controls the link.

$article[link]

That's for the link at the botom.

The other option is, that the source doesn't have a link propertie in there html.
Try to open the source xml (where you get the articles) with your browser and see if every news item has a <link> </link> propertie

Thanks for trying to help.

My problem is not that I am getting a "blank" message body in my posts, it's that I am not seeing a message body at all, only the subject line.

I've posted above that I have included the articlebot_post template in both of my styles and have also verified the xml source to be correct. It's not just one xml feed that I am having this problem with, but all of them. I have even tried the same feeds that others have posted that they use.

I'm not a newbie to hacking VB, I've been using it for about 4 years now (and created 5 hacks myself). I have also been using xml and atom feeds on my personal website for years as well.

I'm just at a loss as to what the problem is. I'd love to be able to use this hack on one of our forums, but the lack of support from the author has me frustrated.

I know the HOTM is now an automated process at vb.org But in my opinion is hacks like this (with no support from the author and trouble with it from almost 95% of the users) should not be eligible for the HOTM.

[puredj]

hmm, okay I didn't know your experience in vbb hacks (I have started with vbuletin some month ago)
I have installed the hack aswell and it works fine,
altough I used xml instead of rss
this is the link where I fetched the xml
http://www.synthtopia.com/rss.xml

Maybe it helps you a bit.
Maybe you could try that one out and see what that one does.

[Robert Basil]

hmm, okay I didn't know your experience in vB hacks (I have started with vbuletin some month ago)
I have installed the hack aswell and it works fine,
altough I used xml instead of rss
this is the link where I fetched the xml
http://www.synthtopia.com/rss.xml

Maybe it helps you a bit.
Maybe you could try that one out and see what that one does.

Nope, same problem with that feed as well. :(

Thanks for trying though.

[puredj]

hmm that's strange...
and no error when you start articlebot.php ?

well if you want to compare something let me know

[Robert Basil]

hmm that's strange...
and no error when you start articlebot.php ?

well if you want to compare something let me know

No error from articlebot.php at all. It runs just fine.

Here is a screenshot of what type of posts I'm getting from the bot.

(Notice how the subject is fine but there is no message body posted?)

This is not a problem with the feed, but the script itself.

[puredj]

Strange, very strange..
Here it works fine, could it be that the author had change the code in a newer version and forgot to post it here?
So that my version of article bot is newer then yours. (would be strange if so, but who knows)

do you use word filters (the option articlebot provides)?

[Robert Basil]

Strange, very strange..
Here it works fine, could it be that the author had change the code in a newer version and forgot to post it here?
So that my version of article bot is newer then yours. (would be strange if so, but who knows)

do you use word filters (the option articlebot provides)?

Nope, no word filters at all.

[ap0c]

maybe the template name has a space somewhere

[Robert Basil]

maybe the template name has a space somewhere

nope, no spaces.

[dune]

Installed. Very nice.

But. ;)

How can I make it so articlebot's post are NOT immediately posted, but queued for moderation? Is this a small change to an insert query?

Nevermind, I figured it out. Here's what I did.

in articlebot.php

Find:
/* +---------------------------------+
| Query: insert thread |
+---------------------------------+ */


AFTER it, add:

// Change to make new threads moderated
$visible = 0;

Find:
'".addslashes($articlebot['username']) . "', ".TIMENOW.", $articlebot[iconid], 1, 0,

REPLACE with:

'".addslashes($articlebot['username']) . "', ".TIMENOW.", $articlebot[iconid], $visible, 0,

Find:
$post_id = $DB_site->insert_id();

AFTER it, add:

/* +------------------------------------+
| Query: set thread to be moderated |
+------------------------------------+ */

if (!$visible) {
$DB_site->query("
INSERT INTO ".TABLE_PREFIX."moderation
(threadid, postid)
VALUES
($thread_id, $post_id)
");
}


That's it. Set the $visible value to 0 to make the articlebot posts moderated. Set it to 1 for the default behavior. Hope that helps someone. I'm not sure if you need to set the post.visible value or not?

Also, what'd I'd really like is if the bot would actually check the permissions of its user in the forum it is posting to and set whether the post should be moderated or not. Actually, it'd probably just be better if you could toggle the "visible" on and off in the articlebot CP.

"Moderating" feeds this ways allows your moderators to control the flow of the feed. Many articles in a feed will be irrelevant or duplications, this way, there's still a human filter on it when necessary.

[mobilephonegame]

<< taps fingers and has no idea why rss2 isnt being shown properly.....

i would be amazed if anyone with this installed can show this rss2 feed on their posts and include post text within content:encoded tags

try it:
http://www.ring4tonez.com/sellersforum/external.php?type=rss2

u will get the post title and thats about it

if you do, please post a link or PM me so i can see for myself :-)

[KW802]

<snip>
"Moderating" feeds this ways allows your moderators to control the flow of the feed. Many articles in a feed will be irrelevant or duplications, this way, there's still a human filter on it when necessary.
That's why I took the advice of one of the VB guys and changed my incoming feeds to all go to one particular forum; that way anybody with access to the forum can modify/move the new posts as needed.

[MikeeX]

This is awesome! I have been looking for something like this.

Thanks!

[blueuniverse]

I've been using the new RSS modified FEED hack. The problem with this is that it couldn't accept my source name, of 250 characters. Would the article bot accept this?

[dune]

That's why I took the advice of one of the VB guys and changed my incoming feeds to all go to one particular forum; that way anybody with access to the forum can modify/move the new posts as needed.

Hmm. That could be a better idea depending on how you want your moderators to handle it. Wish I thought of that. ;)

[mobilephonegame]

<< taps fingers and has no idea why rss2 isnt being shown properly.....

i would be amazed if anyone with this installed can show this rss2 feed on their posts and include post text within content:encoded tags

try it:
http://www.ring4tonez.com/sellersforum/external.php?type=rss2

u will get the post title and thats about it

if you do, please post a link or PM me so i can see for myself :-)

<< must be invisible.....thats twice now ive been passed by.....

[KW802]

<< must be invisible.....thats twice now ive been passed by.....Does http://www.ring4tonez.com/sellersfo...l.php?type=rss work? (note the missing '2' from the end)

[mobilephonegame]

Does http://www.ring4tonez.com/sellersfo...l.php?type=rss work? (note the missing '2' from the end)

yes , rss works perfect :-)

but when i try rss2 feed the <description> tag in the rss turns to <content:encoded> in rss2, and the articlebot doesnt show the post...only title of post

so any rss2 format i need to pull down with <content:encoded> tags is pretty useless....but the first post on here says its rss2 compatible etc..

[KW802]

yes , rss works perfect :-)

but when i try rss2 feed the <description> tag in the rss turns to <content:encoded> in rss2, and the articlebot doesnt show the post...only title of post

so any rss2 format i need to pull down with <content:encoded> tags is pretty useless....but the first post on here says its rss2 compatible etc..The reason I asked if that worked was to confirm that feeder site was working and your mod was up & running.

The reason the "rss2" feeds don't work is because even though the output identifies itself as "RSS" / "2.0" it appears to be really the RSS 1.0 specs which used the Dublin Core standards. I don't think there is much use out of there of the 1.0 specs. Anyway, if that site is yours you could always modify the external.php file but if you're looking for a more generic solution then you'll need to modify the code in the rss_parse.inc file to look for the "content:encoded" tag under RSS instead of just the ATOM section.

Edit: From playing around with external.php the problem looks like a vbulletin issue, not a hack issue.

[cogimo]

Hi all

I installed this but I'm not familiar with setting up a cron job. I want it to check on a daily basis every hour, can someone paste the code I would use.

Thanks

[djohn]

Installed this hack, and i don't have any article bots added. So when i go to Manage Article Bots, i get an standart error Error: No article bots found. Problem is that right above the error box connecting with it a blue line, check out the screenshot. Any way to remove it?

[djohn]

I was also wondering if it's possible to set up execution of articlebot.php through Scheduled Tasks tool in vBulletin AdminCP, if yes, how?

[venomx]

grrr I moved all my sites to a new server and now I get this cron error in my email.

Failed loading /usr/lib/php4/mmcache.so: /usr/lib/php4/mmcache.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

[puredj]

grrr I moved all my sites to a new server and now I get this cron error in my email.

Failed loading /usr/lib/php4/mmcache.so: /usr/lib/php4/mmcache.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

That's because the php isn't installed as standalone version.
You could try to use wget and access the php as a webpage
(replace the php line with the wget line)
example:
wget --no-http-keep-alive -q -O /dev/null http://www.yoursite.com/forums/articlebot/atriclebot.php

[58sniper]

Uninstalled

[Erwin]

grrr I moved all my sites to a new server and now I get this cron error in my email.

Failed loading /usr/lib/php4/mmcache.so: /usr/lib/php4/mmcache.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Your mmcache is in a different directory. Do a locate.

[RetroDreams]

Anyone found a way to keep Articlebot posts from spamming recent threads, and being returned when searching the forums via "New Posts"?

I'd love to re-enable this.
Bump.

[KW802]

Bump.Do you have the incoming threads going directly into public forums or into a holding area? Because of the sheer volume of incoming items I'm finding that's it's much better to have the incoming threads in a holding area and then selectively moving some to the public areas.

[Roms]

Works awesome! Great job! :)

*clicks install!

[manguish]

Anyone found out why if articlebot.php is ran (manually thro IE) it gives a blank page?

This is the only problem i'm having - all well apart from that. I suspect this is stopping my bots from posting tho.

[manguish]

Scrap that - it now works.....

I downloaded the latest MagpieRSS files - http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/

Uploaded them, checked over articlebot.php again - was ok.

Triead manually running articlebot.php - still a blank screen, so i go into manage article bots to see if its changed and my bots have posted!!

So - may be a dodgy magpieRSS file? Download the newest ones and try again.

[KW802]

Anyone found out why if articlebot.php is ran (manually thro IE) it gives a blank page?

This is the only problem i'm having - all well apart from that. I suspect this is stopping my bots from posting tho.It should be a blank page if you're running it manually. If you see something on the screen then it means that an error occurred somewhere. ;)

[manguish]

This says it updates a new thread every (in my case) 10 minutes.

However the cron job is set to 4 hours.

I'm not getting posts unless i run the cron job manually? Once ran manually - i get a couple of posts.

Should my cron job be set to something like every minute?

[manguish]

This says it updates a new thread every (in my case) 10 minutes.

However the cron job is set to 4 hours.

I'm not getting posts unless i run the cron job manually? Once ran manually - i get a couple of posts.

Should my cron job be set to something like every minute?
I'm losing myself quickly here.

Am i right in thinking :

I set my bot to get 6 threads, posting 1 every ten minutes, id need my cron job to run at least once an hour?

So if i set my bot to get 60 threads, posting 1 every ten minutes, id need my cron job to run at least once every 10 hours?

That right?

[manguish]

Just out of interest - i found the new fps_external.php here on vb - making rss more compliant with RSS 2.0 - so i installed that no bother - however :

Any idea why, when using this i get the following error (using it for article bot to make it RSS 2.0 ok) :


Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (mismatched tag at line 292, column 2) in /home/minim/public_html/vb3/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/minim/public_html/vb3/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 138

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/minim/public_html/vb3/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 142


Was working ok with original external.php file (using the include option, not cron) - but only really parseing RSS 0.91

[KW802]

Just out of interest - i found the new fps_external.php here on vb - making rss more compliant with RSS 2.0 - so i installed that no bother - however :

Any idea why, when using this i get the following error (using it for article bot to make it RSS 2.0 ok) :



Was working ok with original external.php file (using the include option, not cron) - but only really parseing RSS 0.91Manquish, what the URL of the RSS feed that you're trying to use? If you post it I'll take a look.

[manguish]

Cheers bud - it works but albeit intermittently :

At the moment i'm testing it with the top 6 on here : http://www.7thgear.com/uk/en/services/feed.asp

With the intention of using a few of them.

They are RSS 2.0

I've scrapped the fps_external php too - it works normally - only getting threads through slowly tho.

[manguish]

Well - for whatever reason - it is now working..... Why - i don't know.

One last thing - is it possible to change the link at the bottom of the thread from (for example) :

http://www.whatever.com

to :

Click here to read thie story (http://www.whatever.com)

[KW802]

Manquish,

You lost me somewhere..... fps_external.php only deals with creating RSS feeds from your site, not to to it. Using or not using fps_external.php would have no affect on this hack unless you were using this hack to get feeds from somebody who happens to be using the fps_external.php hack.

For changing your URL, I think the template "articlebot_post" is what you're after. Try changing it to....$article[description]

{b}{url="$article[link]"}Click here to read this story{/url}{/b}.... but substitute "[" for "{" & "]" for "}" when you copy & paste it.

Kevin

[Blam Forumz]

Why does it only show a small description off the actual news? I saw on another vbulletin forum which grabs news and psots it in a selected forum, as well as ataches an image and the content in the post is alot longer

[buro9]

Why does it only show a small description off the actual news? I saw on another vbulletin forum which grabs news and psots it in a selected forum, as well as ataches an image and the content in the post is alot longer
That sounds extremely interesting... what forum was this on if you don't mind my asking?

[Tenny]

I'm having the same problem as SportbikeWorld & bitg, anyone have ideas?

There is the post, the title, but when you click the thread link, nothing is there.

For example: http://www.tehlounge.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=82

Thanks!

[blueuniverse]

Why does it only show a small description off the actual news? I saw on another vbulletin forum which grabs news and psots it in a selected forum, as well as ataches an image and the content in the post is alot longer

It all depends on the content of the XML/RDF/RSS File that you're grabbing. Some of them, have loads of details, and an image. Some don't.

[Blam Forumz]

Heres the forum: www.totalformat.com

and also, I use the same RSS Feed as they do, TheRegister!

Help :/

[Tenny]

blueuniverse: It's not the feed, I was using this exact same feed earlier yesterday with another RSS BOT for VBulletin, but I didn't like the way it was running, and came across this bot.

Blam Forumz: Wow, just looking at that one, and seeing they have the full article, they must be feeding off a special news rss link imo. Did you ask the admin how he did that by any chance? I'd be very interested also!

[jarekn]

I just installed it... mind you I have it link to the index.php page for now... IT works great... so far I've noticed that only one of the entries has been duplicated... we'll see how it is by tomorrow...

One question I have is that all the feeds are very short and contain a link to another site... I hate this as I am giving traffic away to others and not getting much for it...

My question is this, are there any feeds (pay is ok as long as its not a fortune) that would contain more info and maybe images? I am mostly interested in Entertainment feeds... like music, artists, reviews etc...

Any help would be very very much appreciated...

THANX

[KW802]

Heres the forum: www.totalformat.com (http://www.totalformat.com/)

and also, I use the same RSS Feed as they do, TheRegister!

Help :/It looks more like that site is doing a cut & paste.

[memobug]

I got this working straight off, thanks!

I have 2 questions

Q1: I have a question concerning timing several feeds: how would i stagger the postings so they aren't consecutive - I don't want to annoy members with too frequent (consecutive) posting?

For example, if I set up the individual feeds for periods of 1hr 1.5 hr, 2hr, 2.5 hr, for example, will I need to cron it every 1/2 hour or so to avoid getting several at one time?

Q2 second question is about moving threads. If I move a post made by the robot to a different forum, or delete it, or even PURGE (remove completely) will it know that it has already postedthat news item, or will it try to post it again?

Regards,

Matt

[Kwak]

I am using CPanel and have the Cron jobs available.
I click it and select Standard Mode.

Standard Cron Manager

This is a web interface to the crontab program. It allows you to run commands at any time you specify. Enter the command you would like to run as well as running times.

Please enter an email address where the cron output will be sent:myemail@addresshere.com


And below that, Entry 1 and Command to run:
What is the command I need to type in??

[Kwak]

I get "Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts?promo=app-us)" occasionally.

Could I use Google Alerts as RSS?

[memobug]

I am using CPanel and have the Cron jobs available.
I click it and select Standard Mode.

Standard Cron Manager

This is a web interface to the crontab program. It allows you to run commands at any time you specify. Enter the command you would like to run as well as running times.

Please enter an email address where the cron output will be sent:myemail@addresshere.com


And below that, Entry 1 and Command to run:
What is the command I need to type in??
I would think it would be
php /full/path/to/forum/articlebot/articlebot.php

[buro9]

I get "Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts?promo=app-us)" occasionally.

Could I use Google Alerts as RSS?
Absolutely.

But you need to have something receive the text email version of the alert and convert it to RSS for you.

There are free email2rss gateways out there, or you can work on your own ;)

This is precisely what I have in place use articlebot for... I have signed up to many music email news lists on sites that don't have RSS feeds. But I receive the emails, publish them as an RSS feed, and then consume them with the articlebot and thus they appear in as threads on my forum.

If you need a hand with the choices available for email2rss gateways, just ask.

[Nick0r]

Any ideas how I can make it post more of the description instead of just 1 line

example here http://www.cardschat.com/t4-%5Bblog-post%5D-2004-poker-series-world.html

[Tenny]

Any ideas how I can make it post more of the description instead of just 1 line

example here http://www.cardschat.com/t4-%5Bblog-post%5D-2004-poker-series-world.html

That is what the RSS feed is giving, and is not related to the article bot, the best option would be to try and find an RSS feed giving more!

[gnawph]

Great hack.

One problem I'm having is one of the BEST sites in my subject matter uses a weird RSS tag. Instead of having an description he uses <content:encoded> to list his news content. Is there anyway somebody could point me to what I have to modify? I'm decent at PHP, I just don't know where to start.

This would have to be a custom modification. Like asking IF this is that FEED use the content node instead of the description node.

Here is the feed:
http://halo.bungie.org/rss2channel.xml

[Sooner95]

took me a bit to figure out the whole cron thing, but got it going! thx for the work!

/me clicks install

[Kwak]

took me a bit to figure out the whole cron thing, but got it going! thx for the work!

* Sooner95 clicks install
How did you get the cron setup??

[School-Help]

I dont know but mine doesn't work as of yet. ive set it all up and added a bot with feeds. it just the time registered is all weird. I mean i set it up today for every two hours but it says next time that it will feed is at 2 tomorow? which is in a long time. Anyone got any clue?

[Sooner95]

How did you get the cron setup??


/usr/local/bin/php /home/path/public_html/forum/articlebot/articlebot.php

in the cmd box.. then set a time. also good for testing have it go to an email you can check. pretty much if it doesnt send you an email when it runs, then it works lol

your path will vary depending on your server.

/usr/local/bin/php this was my path to my php excutable, pretty common, but double check.

[Lionel]

hello, I just installed and tested it quickly by inserting the include _once in index.php at the bottom as instructed. Then although it got the news, it also showed on top of the browser the following:

Warning: Cannot use a scalar value as an array in /mnt/hda3/www/site/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 325

I did a search here and could not find the meaning of this. Any help is greatly appreciated, and thanks for the script.

[School-Help]

can someone please help me find the Path to my php executable. I think it is

/usr/local/lib/ but when i use this as the value on the cron job it does not work as i get the email /usr/local/lib/ is a directory. When replace path/to/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php do we use the full path? someone please help!

[James T Brock]

If you don't know how to use a cron job, why not just assign scheduled tasks in the adminCP to do it for you? Much better that way.

But if you insist on a cron job. I'm using Cpanel and this is what I would probably put in my cron slot; /home/username/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php

Replace username with your account username, and replace forums/articlebot/articlebot.php with whatever the correct path is.

[School-Help]

Why does it ask us to use /usr/local/bin/php ? :speechless: infront of the actual path?

[Lionel]

Why does it ask us to use /usr/local/bin/php ? :speechless: infront of the actual path?

those are the php binaries. It is what allows the program to be excuted.

Yould also use the wget command

[Nordinho]

I have this weird permission issue...the article bots post are always published...I've made a new usergroup for the bot, with limited permissions and 'always moderate posts', but the articlebot just ignores those settings and keeps on posting...any other ideas on moderating it's posts???

[buro9]

those are the php binaries. It is what allows the program to be excuted.

Yould also use the wget command

Or you could add some minor hacks and use the VB cron system.

I did this as I'm using mmcache and calling the PHP binaries directly seemed to cause errors. By hacking the code to be a cron job I can call it from VB and have everything work without error... as well as have a log of what it going on (more hacking!).

But it all works fine, and the syntax is not hard to figure out... take a peek at the other cron jobs ;)

[Kwak]

Does anyone know how to setup the Google News Alert? http://www.google.com/alerts?q=&hl=en

[memobug]

I have this weird permission issue...the article bots post are always published...I've made a new usergroup for the bot, with limited permissions and 'always moderate posts', but the articlebot just ignores those settings and keeps on posting...any other ideas on moderating it's posts???
Yes, the robot has carte blanche. It can even post to forums that don't allow posting. Probably the pulldown list for forumids should skip them, but it doesn't. You'd probably need to hack the code and set whatever flag is associated with each post for moderation status.

Regards,

Matt

[memobug]

Does anyone know how to setup the Google News Alert? http://www.google.com/alerts?q=&hl=en
I think you are asking not how to setup the Google News Alert but how to configure the Article Bot to post from a Google News Alert?

I don't think that's possible, yet.

But on a related point I am upset that about 1/2 the articles the Google News Alert turns up seem to require a password subscription. Sometimes not on the first visit from the mail link, but as the post ages a day or two, or perhaps on return visits.

Have you seen this? http://www.bugmenot.com (a system that provides free passwords for various news and subscription services)

Regards,

Matt

[alzibub]

Great hack!

Installed and working a treat, thanks :)

[Kwak]

Is that true? :(
I receive the google e-mails about the topic that I like and wanted to setup with the Article Bot hack.

I thought some other member in this thread (few pages earlier) mention that it does work. I should look back and post.

[Kwak]

Absolutely.

But you need to have something receive the text email version of the alert and convert it to RSS for you.

There are free email2rss gateways out there, or you can work on your own ;)

This is precisely what I have in place use articlebot for... I have signed up to many music email news lists on sites that don't have RSS feeds. But I receive the emails, publish them as an RSS feed, and then consume them with the articlebot and thus they appear in as threads on my forum.

If you need a hand with the choices available for email2rss gateways, just ask.

Here it is!
buro9, please help me on setting up Google News Alert to work together with the Article Bot. Thank you.

[buro9]

Here it is!
buro9, please help me on setting up Google News Alert to work together with the Article Bot. Thank you.
You want to be looking at this:
http://wonko.com/software/mailfeed/

It's what I use with Article Bot to get emails into forums via RSS.

If you don't want to go so far as hacking scripts, then consider mail bucket:
http://www.mailbucket.org/

In both cases you'll need to modify Article Bot slightly to allow any sized RSS description to pass throught (so the email content isn't truncated).

[dethfire]

I can't get this to work, tried it with yahoo and bbc feeds, doesn't seem to get anything, I run the script and the page is blank with the text "ArticleBOT"

[erikxxon]

When i try to Add Article Bot I get this Error message?
What does it mean?

Do i have to create a member on the forum first with this "Bot name"?

ErikXXon
Ill have VB 3.0.3

[permabanned.net]

Triead manually running articlebot.php - still a blank screen, so i go into manage article bots to see if its changed and my bots have posted!!
The PHP script just updates the database entries, it is not supposed to display anything itself. It's like a "cron job" and not meant to generate any visible output.

[permabanned.net]

I'm using this as a way to incorporate Web links via My Furl (http://www.furl.net) from the RSS feed, see example (http://www.permabanned.net/forumdisplay.php?f=12). It could be cool, because then we could also have discussions about the web links if we want.

Is there any way to stop posts from Articlebot from showing up in New Posts? I had another feed set up, but I ended up deleting it because I didn't like all of the items from that feed showing up under New Posts.

Does vBulletin have a mechanism, or is there a hack available, to exclude forum(s) from the New Posts? I'm using separate forums for each feed, so if there was some way I could exclude a forum from the New Posts, that would work.

[permabanned.net]

When i try to Add Article Bot I get this Error message?
What does it mean?

Do i have to create a member on the forum first with this "Bot name"?



ErikXXon
Ill have VB 3.0.3
I had the same problem at first. You need to use the numerical user ID e.g. "12" not the user name when you set it up in Add Article Bot. After you have that set up with the number, it should display the user name

There are probably a dozen different ways to do it, but to find the number, I went to Admin CP -> Users -> Search for Users -> Show All Users and then just let the pointer "hover" over the User link in the left hand column, the last part of the link will say something like "userid=12" where "12" is the numerical user ID in this case.

The question for the user is: Do you want feeds to show up as posts belonging to some user? For the set up with My Furl, it kind of makes sense to have web links that I added show up as from my user, but for many kinds of feeds, it is probably better to set up some bogus user like "Articlebot" and have the posts show up as belonging to that user.

You probably also want to create a New Forum where the articles will go rather than having them posted to another, already existing forum. When you create the forum, you may want to think about whether to "Count Posts Made in this Forum Towards User Post Counts." I decided to leave that "Yes" since people might post replies to some of the articles that show up. However, some people can get ridiculously competetive about post counts :rolleyes: and might complain that it is "unfair" so keep that in mind ;)

[permabanned.net]

Why does it ask us to use /usr/local/bin/php ? :speechless: infront of the actual path?
Why don't you just try typing in the path to the PHP script on the command line and see what happens :rolleyes: cron usually uses "sh" or "bash" to process commands in crontab, and those command shells may have no idea what to do with a PHP script, so you may actually have to invoke the PHP executable to process the PHP script :eek:

As someone else said, you could use "wget" (if it's installed on your web server) and point it to the URL instead if you prefer, and that should work just as well. The script has got to be parsed by PHP one way or another, it is not an executable binary, it is just a bunch of PHP commands. The only difference is what way you use to get PHP to process the script.

[permabanned.net]

can someone please help me find the Path to my php executable. I think it is

/usr/local/lib/ but when i use this as the value on the cron job it does not work as i get the email /usr/local/lib/ is a directory. When replace path/to/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php do we use the full path? someone please help!
Try this:

tcsh -c "which php"

or

csh -c "which php"

[permabanned.net]

Is it possible to exclude some user from showing up in New Posts? If I could do that, then I could just exclude the Articlebot user from new posts, and that would work too.

[permabanned.net]

I found this mod to the navbar template that's supposed to let you exclude forum(s) from New Posts, going to give it a try...
exclude forum(s) from New Posts (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=113232&highlight=%26quot%3BNew+Posts%26quot%3B)

[Torqued]

Just installed. Works great! :)

[Torqued]

Is it possible to exclude some user from showing up in New Posts? If I could do that, then I could just exclude the Articlebot user from new posts, and that would work too.

Does anyone have a way to exclude article bots from being considered for the "top poster" stats?


also:

I can't get this to work, tried it with yahoo and bbc feeds, doesn't seem to get anything, I run the script and the page is blank with the text "ArticleBOT"

If you just installed it, I think you need to wait until there are new articles on your RSS feeds that are after the time you first ran it.

I checked the feeds I was going to use with a desktop RSS reader. My articlebots would not import information from the feeds the first time I ran it, but once new articles were added to the feeds after I ran my Articlebots the first time, the articles would then show up.

(someone please correct me if I am wrong, but that seemed to be the case with my install. If this is the case, it would be a good piece of info to include in the install notes...)

[berberber]

Hi, it is quite cool .... one thing i dont understand is why it does not work with the cron system of VB ? is there a way to do that ?

[poolking]

Hi, it is quite cool .... one thing i dont understand is why it does not work with the cron system of VB ? is there a way to do that ?
Do you mean a cron job to get new articles from the feed?

[Torqued]

I have encountered an interesting post display order issue...

I have one of my articlebots retrieve 5 articles at a time, when it does that, the posts displayed @ forumdisplay are ordered like this:

http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105

The problem with that is that the 5th post down is really the most recent post. This is a little confusing because @ the index.php, the thread "t=105" is shown as the "Last Post", but once the user enters the forum (forumdisplay.php), the thread "t=101" appears to be the most recent/last posted thread.

Any ideas on how to get bot to enter the posts in the correct order?

[Lionel]

I am wondering, using the who's online hack I display "getting the articles..." for location instead of /var/www/etc../.../articlebot.php. Is there a way to make it display a name instead of "Guest" ?

[venomx]

I have encountered an interesting post display order issue...

I have one of my articlebots retrieve 5 articles at a time, when it does that, the posts displayed @ forumdisplay are ordered like this:

http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105

The problem with that is that the 5th post down is really the most recent post. This is a little confusing because @ the index.php, the thread "t=105" is shown as the "Last Post", but once the user enters the forum (forumdisplay.php), the thread "t=101" appears to be the most recent/last posted thread.

Any ideas on how to get bot to enter the posts in the correct order?

I noticed this too a while back... noone offered a way to fix it. :(

[Torqued]

Hi, it is quite cool .... one thing i dont understand is why it does not work with the cron system of VB ? is there a way to do that ?

I have the articlebot running via a vB Scheduled Task. The thing you have to remember about the scheduled tasks is that it's not a "real" cron job - it depends on activity on your forum to kick it off.

[Torqued]

Is that true? :(
I receive the google e-mails about the topic that I like and wanted to setup with the Article Bot hack.

I thought some other member in this thread (few pages earlier) mention that it does work. I should look back and post.

You may want to take a look at the NNTP Gateway for Usenet ( Newsgroups ) & Mailing Lists mod (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=65152). I am using the gateway to import emails instead of newsgroups and it works great. I have created several different email addresses @ my domain for the different categories of news/information that I am receiving emails for.

[bondjetta]

I've found an interesting (and yet aggrevating) issue w/ Article Bot...

I'm pulling RSS from this URL:
www.zenguide.com/rss/generator.cfm?content=stories&category=10&code=XXXXXXXXX
which I have edited to remove my access code (sorry guys, register and you can have one too ;))

HOWEVER here is what Article Bot is storing (due in part possibly to storing it as rendered html?)
www.zenguide.com/rss/generator.cfm?content=stories&amp;category=10&amp;code=XXX XXXXXX

You might see the problem: namely the &amp; instead of & as a result of this I cannot pull RSS from any of the feeds on this site (seeing as they require the category and code to access them.

Is there a quick way I can get around this? I'm going to try to investigate the storage of the RSS URL when I get home, but perhaps someone has some insight before I start? :)


EDIT: i used [code ] tags for the url's in hopes that they wont render as real links simply so you can see the &amp; issue :)

[bondjetta]

and...i figured it out thanks to some input from Ianomed :D I have yet to find a URL that this has an adverse affect on, but if someone finds one please let me know :)

How To:
1) Open /admincp/articlebot_admin.php
2) Do a find for:
print_input_row('<b>RSS File Path</b><br />URL to the RSS XML feed.', 'rss_path', $rss_feed['rss_path']);
And replace with:
print_input_row('<b>RSS File Path</b><br />URL to the RSS XML feed.', 'rss_path', html_entity_decode ($rss_feed['rss_path']));


Save and upload :) Pretty simple, it uses html_entity_decode to convert the html entities to their applicable characters. It's working for me so far and is rendering valid URL's now!

[vfxtalk]

Awesome work ...few questions...

Is there anyway to control the style of the text etc ?

Is there any possibility to have the ability to include images if they are available ?

Cheers

Paul

[Neobud]

Hello. Seemingly basic question (since nobody has asked it in 28 pages).

How do I add the articlebot_post template. Is it the 'vbulletin-style.xml' page that I alter? If so, what does the code look like?

Thanks. I'm very new to VB.

[trackpads]

Hello. Seemingly basic question (since nobody has asked it in 28 pages).

How do I add the articlebot_post template. Is it the 'vbulletin-style.xml' page that I alter? If so, what does the code look like?

Thanks. I'm very new to VB.
No, just open the styles and templates and in the little pull down menu choose the "Add New Template".

-Jason

[Torqued]

I'm trying to import this XML feed:

http://news.biohealthmatics.com/feeds/rssnews.aspx

The link in the xml file looks lik this:

<link>http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041117/law061_1.html</link>

but I'm getting a malformed URL like this on import:

http://<br%20/>http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041117/law061_1.html<br%20/>

Any ideas as to what is going on here and how I can fix it? I have several other feeds that are importing just fine. :confused:

[dorkus]

When I run the articlebot.php file from the command line, I get this error:

PHP Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference in /var/www/htdocs/forum/articlebot/rss_parse.inc on line 399

PHP version 4.3.3

Any ideas as to why it's happening and how to fix it?

[dnoyeb2002]

Hello Everyone,

This is a great hack but for some reason I can't get it to pull the feeds (I've been manually running the articlebot.php file every hour). This time though, I finally got an error message of:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: html_entity_decode() in /home/virtual/site7/fst/var/www/html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 242

Could someone possibly tell me what that is . . .

Thanks,

[dorkus]

I upgraded to PHP 4.3.10 RC, and I'm still getting the same error: PHP Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference in /var/www/htdocs/forum/articlebot/rss_parse.inc on line 399

I gave up. So I installed the other RSS feed article bot that was mentioned in this thread, and that works great so far. I'd recommend that if you are encountering this problem.

Velocd: thanks for the work you put into this hack. I wish it worked for me.

[snake-boy]

Just installed this now (Clicked Install), and am glad to say, it's working great. Excellent Hack! Thank you.

-snake

[ragintajin]

I am still getting this error:



I believe this issue has not been fully addressed yet. Can anyone shed some light or should I just ditch this and find something else?Yup, I'm getting the same "Error: There is no file located" response...funny thing is it worked perfectly before I changed servers.

I know the settings are right because when I run the articlebot.php directly the timestamp in the AdminCP says so.

I know the feed I use (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/rss.xml) is fine too.

[leeman]

Hey, this looks neat....

Yes I know I should have read the posts....
But I'm on short timeshedule (SP?) to day and is there a way of making this mod pull diffrent RSS feeds to diffrent forums????

[Torqued]

Hey, this looks neat....

Yes I know I should have read the posts....
But I'm on short timeshedule (SP?) to day and is there a way of making this mod pull diffrent RSS feeds to diffrent forums????

Yes. You can specify the forum for each RSS feed. And you can have multiple RSS feeds on a single bot, with each feed going to a separate forum.

[leeman]

Yes. You can specify the forum for each RSS feed. And you can have multiple RSS feeds on a single bot, with each feed going to a separate forum.


Cute !!!! :d

*LeeMan downloads and installs.

[leeman]

Installed but i don't get it to post... :(

Is there a way to check that it's getting the feeds...???
And i'm not using Cron, I use VB scheduler....

[Torqued]

When you run it the first time, it won't import anything. Then you will have to wait for the next scheduled run time for it to import any *new* articles since it checked the first time.. Use a frequently updated RSS feed (i like to use slashdot.org), set the RSS Post Interval to something like 15 mins, and only retrieve 1-2 articles at a time. This will allow you to fairly quickly validate that your feeds are working.

[akiy]

I have this weird permission issue...the article bots post are always published...I've made a new usergroup for the bot, with limited permissions and 'always moderate posts', but the articlebot just ignores those settings and keeps on posting...any other ideas on moderating it's posts??? I just hacked the code so that all posts made by the Article Bot get put into the moderation queue.

In articlebot.php, find:

$DB_site->query("
INSERT INTO ".TABLE_PREFIX."thread
(title, lastpost, forumid, open,
replycount, postusername, postuserid, lastposter, dateline, iconid,
visible, attach, similar, is_rss)
VALUES
('".addslashes($article['title'])."', ".TIMENOW.", $articlebot[forumid],
1, 0, '".addslashes($articlebot['username']) . "', $articlebot[userid],
'".addslashes($articlebot['username']) . "', ".TIMENOW.", $articlebot[iconid], 1, 0,
'".addslashes($similarthreads)."', 1)
");

... and replace with:

$DB_site->query("
INSERT INTO ".TABLE_PREFIX."thread
(title, lastpost, forumid, open,
replycount, postusername, postuserid, lastposter, dateline, iconid,
visible, attach, similar, is_rss)
VALUES
('".addslashes($article['title'])."', ".TIMENOW.", $articlebot[forumid],
1, 0, '".addslashes($articlebot['username']) . "', $articlebot[userid],
'".addslashes($articlebot['username']) . "', ".TIMENOW.", $articlebot[iconid], 0, 0,
'".addslashes($similarthreads)."', 1)
");

The above is a one character change -- look for the colored "0" in the second code segment...

Also, after:

/* +---------------------------------+
| Query: update thread |
+---------------------------------+ */


$DB_site->query("
UPDATE ".TABLE_PREFIX."thread
SET firstpostid = $post_id
WHERE threadid = $thread_id
");

... add:

$p = $DB_site->query_first("SELECT firstpostid from ".TABLE_PREFIX."thread
where threadid = $thread_id");

$DB_site->query("
INSERT INTO ".TABLE_PREFIX."moderation
(threadid, postid, type)
VALUES
($thread_id, $p[firstpostid], \"thread\")");

Once again, this will cause all posts done by all article bots to be put into the moderation queue.

Let's hope that VeloCD can now use this in the future so that we can specify which bots get moderated and which ones do not...

[ragintajin]

Since there is no support for the "There is no file located" error...how do I go about uninstalling this hack? (Specifically, the database changes)

[berberber]

I have the articlebot running via a vB Scheduled Task. The thing you have to remember about the scheduled tasks is that it's not a "real" cron job - it depends on activity on your forum to kick it off.

Thank you, i finally found how to set up a common cron task and I believe it is better (not to move a forum, but thats rare actually).

One other thing, after a server out time of a few hours, many articles were indexed a second time. (it is quite rare too, but perhaps that could be improved ?)
Thanks you for the hack.

[jzewatsky]

I have installed this hack and am loving it.

I could use some help writing the cron to run articlebot.php. This whole idea is new to me and I dont do that well with this type of stuff to begin with. My database management tool provided by my server is called phpMyAdmin (I believe) and I have downloaded PUttY. I unfortunately have no idea what to do with either of these to set up the cron. Any help (especially examples) would be great!

[poolking]

Are you actually running cron jobs to get the feed?

[bishop93]

Are you actually running cron jobs to get the feed?


Wait wait. I deleted my post because I *just* went back, changed to the use of the phpinclude_end option, and suddenly had incredible PHP errors at the top of the forums, hit refresh and *bing* there was slashdot.

That tells me that the cron job isn't doing it's job. Or so I would think.

But, the other RSS that I was really after still isn't working ... BUT, I don't think that is a problem of this mod. I think that's a problem of the source.

[bishop93]

Okay ... this is the error that keeps coming back. Is this the source or the mod?

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (not well-formed (invalid token) at line 3579, column 35) in /home/xxx/public_html/xxx/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/xxx/public_html/xxx/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/xxx/public_html/xxx/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141

It would appear to me that it's the source. However, using the same feed with other readers (we pick up the feed for our website), works just fine without error.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

[Tenny]

Wait wait. I deleted my post because I *just* went back, changed to the use of the phpinclude_end option, and suddenly had incredible PHP errors at the top of the forums, hit refresh and *bing* there was slashdot.

That tells me that the cron job isn't doing it's job. Or so I would think.

But, the other RSS that I was really after still isn't working ... BUT, I don't think that is a problem of this mod. I think that's a problem of the source.
Very confused what you did? Can you explain it again/ What you deleted? Where is phpinclude_end?

Thanks, hit me up on AIM: Tendollaz, maybe I can figure it out and try to explain to everyone else...

[bishop93]

I did manage to get things worked out. Sorta. I finally got the cron job to function properly as well. (I didn't read carefully what I was inputing)

However, the cron job now kicks back the same exact error as the phpinclude_end option did when I tried that way.

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (not well-formed (invalid token) at line 3657, column 35) in /home/xxx/public_html/xxx/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/xxx/public_html/xxx/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/xxx/public_html/xxx/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141

I'm still thinking this could be the source issue since that parsing RSS file error looks familiar. But, if this returns an error, I'm not sure why my other newsfeed module (in Mambo CMS) is pulling the exact same feed without any errors.

(I'm at work and IMs are blocked, but I'd be more than willing to open things up and let you in to check around if you want to drop me an email. Currently the forums are in test mode anyway before we switch the main boards from SMF to vBulletin (a different headache, but oh well).)

[Playboy69]

I am not sure what I am doing wrong but I cant seem to get this to work. I set it all up and it even shows the control panel in my admincp but I cant seem to get this booger to post nothing. I even set up a cron job and still nothing. any possable clue on what i need to do please.

[bishop93]

Is there anyone that can tell me how to resolve this error that I posted above?

Thanks!

[bishop93]

Yet one more thing. Is this normal?

[memobug]

I suggest you both start with a feed that is known to work. There are quite a few variables and if you try to solve everything at once you might not succeed.

Here's one that works for me:

http://www.bonsai-today.com/rss/bonsai-today-rss.html

2. Nothing will happen unless the Article Bot is enabled and associated with a user. Did you create a user and assign the article bot to a user?

Advanced Settings - Leave all that regex stuff blank for now.

3. Did you configure the RSS Feed?

Mine for the feed listed above is

ID:1
http://www.bonsai-today.com/rss/bonsai-today-rss.html
Forum: General - choose your own forum
Icon ID: 1
RSS Label:
Post Interval: 1500 ***See note below***
Fetch Limit: 1
# Skip: 0
Build Similar Thread: Yes
Skip articles that don't contain descriptions: Yes
Enabled: Yes
Advanced Stuff: All Blank

***[b]Nothing will happen until the 1500 minutes elapse, so set it to some low value for testing, like 60 minutes or 5 minutes if you're impatient

Set up your cron. I am using Cpanel X with Cron Jobs:

Click the Cron Jobs icon and choose Standard.

Command to run:
php /home/~user/public_html/forum/articlebot/articlebot.phpYou need your full, absolute path here. My path won't work for you.

Minutes: 0
Hour(s): Every Hour
Day(s): Every Day
Month(s): Every Month
Weekday(s) Every weekday

You won't get any posting if

*you use a bad feed
*mess up on the cron path or don't have any cron
*don't attach a feed to a robot
*don't attach a robot to a userid
*set too long a time period
*choose the wrong forum for posting

Summary: Get it working with a known good RSS first, then you can experiment with others.

Regards,

Matt

[bishop93]

Yup. Got it. I have a second feed (from the same source, I might add) that works. The first one continues to give the error that I posted above. Now, if it's a bad RSS feed, great. But if there is a way that I can work with what I have and figure out what's messing up the feed in one RSS that isn't messing it up in the other.

Here's the kick though. The same RSS feed that is messing up with this bot, works through different mod (for a CMS, not a forum) and pulls the feed just fine without error. So ... is there a way around this? I'm hoping. I'm watching this mod actually work with one feed.

[bishop93]

Okay. Also, in the RSS Admin, I'm see that the Post Total equals 93, but there's only 4 posts and I'm quite sure they are from the functioning RSS feed (since I can see those posted). That would leave 89 posts somwhere. Where? I got a different report this time when I changed my cron function from what was listed in the install.html to what you have above (with my own foum path, of course). Now I this:

X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.9
Set-Cookie: emplastvisit=1103166001; expires=Fri, 16-Dec-05 03:00:01 GMT; path=/
Set-Cookie: emplastactivity=1103165101; expires=Fri, 16-Dec-05 03:00:01 GMT; path=/
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

Different than the MagpieRSS error, but still not something that I understand. If it's not the Magpie error, where are the posts?


Edit: The second report just came in. Now it's back to both the above code AND the original code.

X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.9
Set-Cookie: emplastvisit=1103166301; expires=Fri, 16-Dec-05 03:05:01 GMT; path=/
Set-Cookie: emplastactivity=1103166001; expires=Fri, 16-Dec-05 03:05:01 GMT; path=/
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

<br />
<b>Warning</b>: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (not well-formed (invalid token) at line 4524, column 35) in <b>/home/xxxn/public_html/xxx/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc</b> on line <b>230</b><br /> <br />
<b>Warning</b>: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in <b>/home/xxxn/public_html/xxx/articlebot/articlebot.php</b> on line <b>137</b><br /> <br />
<b>Warning</b>: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in <b>/home/xxx/public_html/xxx/articlebot/articlebot.php</b> on line <b>141</b><br />

[memobug]

Two ideas for you now

It sounds like it is incompatible with the importer for one reason or another. A couple things you might try

1. Validate the RSS feed and see if it passes validation
2. Post the url to the feed and ask someone else to try importing it using their vbArticle Bot
3. Be very careful with the board you select. The robot has the capability to post to any forum, including boards that are not "forums," boards that are permissions excluded to ordinary users, boards that don't accept posts and boards that are otherwise closed. Tell the robot to post and it will post, whatever the circumstances.

Regards,

Matt

[bishop93]

Okay. Let me ask this. The Advanced area that does replacements. I think I can see the problem. One feed validates but with "potential issues" -- therefore it posts. The other does not validate but because it doesn't like the & or \ in various places. Is the replacement aspect that I see there a way to replace these characters with something more "friendly"? Or am I way off here?

BTW, I want to add this in here as I start to actually simmer down. Thank you. You've been an incredible help in this process.

[memobug]

I think those regular expression fields are provided to "Clean up" various tags left in posts after they are imported and parsed. You could try making replacements, but I think that's after the fact. Maybe you should contact whomever is providing the feed and tell them that their feeds aren't validating.

Regards,

Matt

[bishop93]

The problem is that they don't care. Sad, but true. I'll try the replacement today and see what happens.

[j_86]

Any way to stop "Unknown Location" in the Who's Online list?

I've set it up, and got it working for Crontab.

[MrNase]

I just need to find a German feed about vintage cars and Iam fine. Thanks for this great hack :)

[Dio]

Installed per instructions and received the following error message:

includes/config.php does not exist. Cannot continue.

I know the config.php file is there, it appears that there is something off in the code. Any ideas on how to resolve this problem?

Problem SOLVED!

[Burley]

hi guys,

i'm a bit of a noob. but i installed this mod (so far so good) but now I get an error each time my bot has to make a post;


Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (mismatched tag at line 291, column 4) in /home/httpd/vhosts/p8ce.com/httpdocs/test/new/forums/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: Argument to array_reverse() should be an array in /home/httpd/vhosts/p8ce.com/httpdocs/test/new/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/httpd/vhosts/p8ce.com/httpdocs/test/new/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141


does any1 know why this is happening?

[redlinemiami]

Burley it just means that your rss feed can't be parsed. In other words its a bad feed. Get another and repeat. When you get a blank screen with no errors...your in the clear.

[redlinemiami]

I installed article bot..so far so good. I've tried different feeds...all is well. When it posts the feeds to my forum it only displays the title, a short description and a url to someone elses article.

Its doing its job, however, does anyone now how I can capture the entire article and post it as opposed to just the description.

Usually its due to the rss feed it self...it can only read what its given, but, are there any rss feeds out there that give you the whole article??

[limey]

Is there a way to add fields for the bot to post ie: date?

will this work?
if (!$article['link'] || !$article['title'] || !$article['date'])

I'm about to try it, but in case someone knows how to add more fields, please let me know. Thanks.

[j_86]

How can I stop the "UNKNOWN LOCATION" in the who's online bit, when i'm using article bot with a cron job?

[w0z]

Sowwy my n00b question, but is anyone using this Hack in vB 3.0.4 ?

I have this currently installed on my production vB 3.0.3, is there anything I should pay attention when I upgrade vB to 3.0.4, do I have to do any additional steps after upgrading to ensure this Hack will continue to work? O_o

Cheers,
w0z

[James Goddard]

I've recently set up a new board and have added the ArticleBot mod to post news items to a specific forum.

The problem is that now the "Bot" user shows up as the "Top" poster.

Anyone know how to make the Bot's posts visible but not count in the post count? I know I could turn off post counts for the forum the bot posts in but that would affect all users.

James

[Torqued]

I've recently set up a new board and have added the ArticleBot mod to post news items to a specific forum.

The problem is that now the "Bot" user shows up as the "Top" poster.

Anyone know how to make the Bot's posts visible but not count in the post count? I know I could turn off post counts for the forum the bot posts in but that would affect all users.

James

Find the following code in articlebot.php:

SET posts = posts + $user_posts

replace with:

SET posts = posts

[j_86]

This hack is VB 3.05 compatiable.

[memobug]

For the past few months I have been getting the following error. I believe I have traced it back to articlebot.php

Database error in vBulletin 3.0.3:
Invalid SQL:
UPDATE user
SET posts = posts + Array
WHERE userid = 0

mysql error: Unknown column 'Array' in 'field list'
mysql error number: 1054
Date: Thursday 09th of December 2004 05:00:03 PM
Script: http://
Referer:
Username: Unregistered
IP Address:

The error seems to be related to this bit of code:
if (is_array($users))
{
foreach ($users as $userid => $user_posts)
{
/* +---------------------------------+
| Query: update article bot(s) |
+---------------------------------+ */


$DB_site->query("
UPDATE ".TABLE_PREFIX."user
SET posts = posts + $user_posts
WHERE userid = $userid
");
}
}

Any idea how $userposts could take on a non-numeric value? I have two robots and I believe that one of them currently has no RSS assignments.

Regards,

Matt

[mavherzog]

I am still getting this error:

There is no file located at http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/...=max&format=rss

I believe this issue has not been fully addressed yet. Can anyone shed some light or should I just ditch this and find something else?

If this is not working for known good feeds, there are probably two most common reasons:

1. PHP on the server is not compiled with XML support.
2. php.ini "allow_url_fopen" is set to off.

[ragintajin]

I got this error after uploading the newest init.php:

Warning: chdir(): No such file or directory (errno 2) in /articlebot/articlebot.php on line 42Any ideas??

[Java624]

Im about to install this I hope it works for 3.05

[mavherzog]

Im about to install this I hope it works for 3.05

I'm using it with 3.0.5 with no issues. I LIKE IT!!!

[Gandolfe]

Everything works fine, seems like would be a great hack, thats if it was syndicating with the .xml .rss feeds - I get this error from articlebot.php


Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /hsphere/local/home/williamk/cs-elite.net/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 92

<?php



/* +------------------------------------------------------------------+
| articlebot.php, v1.1, 07/25/04 |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Support: www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=67078 |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Author: velocd |
| www.animesystem.com |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+ */



/* +---------------------------------+
| Environment |
+---------------------------------+ */



error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE);

define('NO_REGISTER_GLOBALS', 1);

$globaltemplates = array(
'articlebot_post'
);



/* +---------------------------------+
| Dependencies |
+---------------------------------+ */



// Provide absolute server path to forums.
// e.g. /home/cjohn/public_html/forums/


// chdir('/hsphere/local/home/williamk/cs-elite.net/forums/');
// require_once './global.php';

include_once '/hsphere/local/home/williamk/cs-elite.net/forums/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc';


// If you intend to call this script by placing a
// include_once './articlebot/articlebot.php'; in your
// phpinclude_end template, then comment out:
//
// chdir('/path/to/forums/');
// require_once './global.php';
//
// Note, recommended usage for this script is by
// crontab with this shell command in mind:
//
// e.g. /usr/local/bin/php /path/to/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php
// (substituting the paths with their correct location)
//
// If /usr/local/bin/php is not the correct path (generally it is),
// use PuTTY to SSH in and use the command "whereis php" to find
// the correct path.
//
// Explanation on crontabs:
// http://www.cpanel.net/docs/cp/cronJobs.htm
//
// By this method you are not calling an extra query on every page
// to check for ready-to-post article bots.


if ($vboptions['similarthreadsearch'])
{
require_once './includes/functions_search.php';
}



/* +------------------------------------------+
| Request: article bot syndication |
+------------------------------------------+ */



if (!$_REQUEST['do'])
{
/* +---------------------------------+
| Query: fetch article bots |
+---------------------------------+ */


$result_articlebots = $DB_site->query("
SELECT articlebot_rss.*, articlebot.userid,
articlebot.articlebotid,
articlebot.regex_title_search AS global_regex_title_search,
articlebot.regex_title_replace AS global_regex_title_replace,
articlebot.regex_desc_search AS global_regex_desc_search,
articlebot.regex_desc_replace AS global_regex_desc_replace,
".TABLE_PREFIX."user.username
FROM articlebot_rss
LEFT JOIN articlebot
USING (articlebotid)
LEFT JOIN ".TABLE_PREFIX."user
USING (userid)
WHERE nextpost <= ".TIMENOW."
AND articlebot_rss.enabled = 1
AND articlebot.enabled = 1
");


if ($DB_site->num_rows($result_articlebots))
{
$fetch_days = 20;
$timecut = TIMENOW - ((60*60*24) * $fetch_days);

/* +---------------------------------+
| Query: fetch threads |
+---------------------------------+ */


$result_threads = $DB_site->query("
SELECT title
FROM articlebot_rss_cache
WHERE dateline >= $timecut
");


while ($thread = $DB_site->fetch_array($result_threads))
{
$threads[] = trim($thread['title']);
}

while ($articlebot = $DB_site->fetch_array($result_articlebots))
{
$rss = fetch_rss($articlebot['rss_path']);

$articles = array_reverse($rss->items);

$count = 0;

foreach ($articles as $article)
{
$article['title'] = trim($article['title']);

if (!$article['link'] || !$article['title'])
{
continue;
}

if ($articlebot['desc_required'] && !$article['description'])
{
continue;
}

if (is_array($threads) && in_array($article['title'], $threads))
{
continue;
}

if (!$articlebot['lastpost'] && (--$articlebot['initialtrim'] > 0))
{
/* +---------------------------------------+
| Query: insert unused cache threads |
+---------------------------------------+ */


$DB_site->query("
INSERT INTO articlebot_rss_cache
(title, dateline)
VALUES
('".addslashes($article['title'])."', ".TIMENOW.")
");


continue;
}


/* +---------------------------------+
| Query: insert cache thread |
+---------------------------------+ */


$DB_site->query("
INSERT INTO articlebot_rss_cache
(title, dateline)
VALUES
('".addslashes($article['title'])."', ".TIMENOW.")
");


if ($articlebot['global_regex_title_search'] || $articlebot['regex_title_search'])
{
if ($articlebot['regex_title_search'])
{
$articlebot['global_regex_title_search'] = $articlebot['regex_title_search'];
$articlebot['global_regex_title_replace'] = $articlebot['regex_title_replace'];
}

$article['title'] = @preg_replace(
"$articlebot[global_regex_title_search]",
"$articlebot[global_regex_title_replace]",
$article['title']
);
}

if ($vboptions['similarthreadsearch'] && $articlebot['build_similar_threads'])
{
$similarthreads = fetch_similar_threads($article['title']);
}
else
{
$similarthreads = '';
}

if ($articlebot['label'])
{
$article['title'] = $articlebot['label'] . ' ' . $article['title'];
}


/* +---------------------------------+
| Query: insert thread |
+---------------------------------+ */


$DB_site->query("
INSERT INTO ".TABLE_PREFIX."thread
(title, lastpost, forumid, open,
replycount, postusername, postuserid, lastposter, dateline, iconid,
visible, attach, similar, is_rss)
VALUES
('".addslashes($article['title'])."', ".TIMENOW.", $articlebot[forumid],
1, 0, '".addslashes($articlebot['username']) . "', $articlebot[userid],
'".addslashes($articlebot['username']) . "', ".TIMENOW.", $articlebot[iconid], 1, 0,
'".addslashes($similarthreads)."', 1)
");


$thread_id = $DB_site->insert_id();

$article['description'] = strip_tags(html_entity_decode(trim($article['description'])));

if ($articlebot['global_regex_desc_search'] || $articlebot['regex_desc_search'])
{
if ($articlebot['regex_desc_search'])
{
$articlebot['global_regex_desc_search'] = $articlebot['regex_desc_search'];
$articlebot['global_regex_desc_replace'] = $articlebot['regex_desc_replace'];
}

$article['description'] = @preg_replace(
"$articlebot[global_regex_desc_search]",
"$articlebot[global_regex_desc_replace]",
$article['description']
);
}

eval('$articlebot_post = "' . fetch_template('articlebot_post', 0, 0) . '";');


/* +---------------------------------+
| Query: insert post |
+---------------------------------+ */


$DB_site->query("
INSERT INTO ".TABLE_PREFIX."post
(threadid, parentid, title, username, userid, dateline, pagetext, allowsmilie,
showsignature, ipaddress, iconid, visible, attach)
VALUES
($thread_id, 0, '".addslashes($article['title'])."',
'".addslashes($articlebot['username'])."', $articlebot[userid],
".TIMENOW.", '" . addslashes($articlebot_post)."', 0, 1,
'".addslashes($_SERVER['SERVER_ADDR'])."', $articlebot[iconid], 1, 0)
");


$post_id = $DB_site->insert_id();


/* +---------------------------------+
| Query: update thread |
+---------------------------------+ */


$DB_site->query("
UPDATE ".TABLE_PREFIX."thread
SET firstpostid = $post_id
WHERE threadid = $thread_id
");


require_once './includes/functions_databuild.php';

$foruminfo['indexposts'] = 1;

build_post_index($post_id, $foruminfo, 1);

if ($forums[$articlebot['forumid']])
{
$forum_posts = ++$forums[$articlebot['forumid']]['forum_posts'];

unset($forums[$articlebot['forumid']]);
}
else
{
$forum_posts = 1;
}

$forums[$articlebot['forumid']] = array(
'lastposter' => $articlebot['username'],
'lastthread' => $article['title'],
'lastthreadid' => $thread_id,
'lasticonid' => $articlebot['iconid'],
'forum_posts' => $forum_posts
);

if ($users[$articlebot['userid']])
{
$users[$articlebot['userid']]++;
}
else
{
$users[$articlebot['userid']] = 1;
}

if (++$count >= $articlebot['fetchlimit'])
break;
}

$nextpost = TIMENOW + ($articlebot['postinterval'] * 60);


/* +-------------------------+
| Query: update rss |
+-------------------------+ */


$DB_site->query("
UPDATE articlebot_rss
SET lastpost = ".TIMENOW.",
nextpost = $nextpost
WHERE rssid = $articlebot[rssid]
");


unset($rss);
}

if (is_array($users))
{
foreach ($users as $userid => $user_posts)
{
/* +---------------------------------+
| Query: update article bot(s) |
+---------------------------------+ */


$DB_site->query("
UPDATE ".TABLE_PREFIX."user
SET posts = posts + $user_posts
WHERE userid = $userid
");
}
}

if (is_array($forums))
{
foreach ($forums as $forumid => $forum)
{
/* +---------------------------------------+
| Query: update affected forum(s) |
+---------------------------------------+ */


$DB_site->query("
UPDATE ".TABLE_PREFIX."forum
SET replycount = replycount + $forum[forum_posts],
threadcount = threadcount + $forum[forum_posts],
lastpost = ".TIMENOW.",
lastposter = '" . addslashes($forum['lastposter']) . "',
lastthread = '" . addslashes($forum['lastthread']) . "',
lastthreadid = $forum[lastthreadid],
lasticonid = $forum[lasticonid]
WHERE forumid = $forumid
");
}
}
}
}



?>

That's a copy of how articlebot.php is at the moment. Any ideas?

[jshafer817]

I have installed vbarticles but I cannot read a feed I really want.
Its in Atom .3 and the encoding is in utf-8
They also have an rss feel but its encoding is also utf-8

Is this possible for me to do???

Thanks for your time! I could have never gotten this far without all of yaulls help.

[TTG]

Just installed and setup a few seperate posting categories .. works like a charm.
Just gotta work out this cron job instead of manually calling articlebot/articlebot.php every couple of hours.

Clicked install .. thanks for a great hack :)

[James Goddard]

Find the following code in articlebot.php:

SET posts = posts + $user_posts

replace with:

SET posts = posts


Thanks!

James

[bishop93]

Is there anyway to have this bot as an "always signed in" user rather than a Guest? It would seem that certain settings that don't allow guests to actually read posts without being registered and signed in break this little hack. And it's been working so well up until now.

[H@K@N]

clicks *install*

Does somebody know, how i can prune automatically the posted Feeds ?

I don't like to remove them manually, if the BoT is posting 20 Posts/Day or even more ...

gr33tz

[Ruffneck]

This script is nice...but i have a little problem...

I´ve installed it sucesfull and running the articlebot.php on the browser...and the bot added the rss entrys on the board...with title and thread description...

I´ve added a include on the global.php
require_once('./articlebot/articlebot.php');

And edit the chdir('/path/to/forums/'); to the right real chdir... /var/www/html/blablala..../

The script add new Threads with the right title, but nothing thread self...the link to the thread from the index was unavaible...

I think the script has problems with the articlebot_post, because i saw a error with articlebot_post...

Why it´s first works fine and now...

[Ruffneck]

Here is the error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: fetch_template() in /var/www/blabla/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 259

This line is:
eval('$articlebot_post = "' . fetch_template('articlebot_post', 0, 0) . '";');

I´ve added this template and it works first time fine, but now...

[Firewire]

How do you do a CRON Job anyway?

I have CPANEL. I set it up, and I get this garbage:

/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 1: ?php: No such file or directory
/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 5: /aquota.user: Permission denied
/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 6: syntax error near unexpected token `|'
/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 6: ` | articlebot.php, v1.1, 07/25/04 |'

I checked the permissions of the file to make sure it was executable. This is what I put into the CRON JOB scheduler line as the location:

/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php

Any ideas?

[Torqued]

How do you do a CRON Job anyway?

I have CPANEL. I set it up, and I get this garbage:

/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 1: ?php: No such file or directory
/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 5: /aquota.user: Permission denied
/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 6: syntax error near unexpected token `|'
/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 6: ` | articlebot.php, v1.1, 07/25/04 |'

I checked the permissions of the file to make sure it was executable. This is what I put into the CRON JOB scheduler line as the location:

/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php

Any ideas?

I had the same problem and was unable to figure it out. So I made 4 scheduled vB tasks to run the article bot @ 0, 15, 30, and 45 mins every hour.

[Firewire]

Cool! I'll try that!

[memobug]

How do you do a CRON Job anywayI documented a cpanel cron setup back here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost.php?p=582820&postcount=441

Looks like you are missing the php command and *nix has no idea what to do with it, so it is trying to interpret it (your php file) as a series of shell commands.

Regards,

Matt

[Booth]

Since installing this, my forum has been running very slow... :ermm:

[paulz]

Since installing this, my forum has been running very slow... :ermm:
how often did you set the scheduled task to run? this would load down a server if set too frequently.

[Jaxx]

Ok, i'm needing some input here.

I've tried several places on getting a feed for http://eq2players.station.sony.com/ and have yet to find one that is really good. The feed I use from g-blog (he custom makes them) is the best I have had so far. But still, I am unable to get the links IN the stories as they appear on the site.

All it shows is a link at the bottom of the story, and many times, I have to fix the formating since g-blog only does a html scrap.

You can see what I mean here: http://www.ahazi.org.

Any help would be appreciated.

[bane1]

OK,

I've been playing around with the regex replacements for the last 8 or so hours. I need HELP!!!!

I've figured out how to make single pattern replacements. i.e.
search: /patternA/
replace: valueB

This replaces patternA with valueB

Also
I've also got logical OR's pattern replacements working.

search: /patternA|patternB|patternC/
replace: valueD

This is great for replacing patternA and patternB and patternC with valueD

What I realy need help with, and I'm not even sure if it's possible, is multiple pattern matching with different values for each pattern match.

Example:

search: /patternA/, /patternB/ ,/patternC/
replace: patternA with valueD, patternB with valueE, patternC with valueF

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Chris

[Ruffneck]

LOL the users on my community, don?t like the bot...:(

[bishop93]

Is there anyway to have this bot as an "always signed in" user rather than a Guest? It would seem that certain settings that don't allow guests to actually read posts without being registered and signed in break this little hack. And it's been working so well up until now.Is there any way to resolve this? This would see to be an open loophole for boards that have guest restricted access. I'd like to keep the forums secure while still allowing the bot to post.

Otherwise, we continue to run problem free.

[mvulcan]

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /hsphere/local/home/williamk/cs-elite.net/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 92


If you're running it from the console
/usr/bin/php /srv/www/blahblahblah/articlebot.php

you will need to uncomment the
chdir('/path to forums/');
require_once './global.php';

hope that helps.

[kadafi_alive]

Hi,

Does anyone know how to un-install this bot?

[j_86]

Yes.. work backwards through the installation process.

[kadafi_alive]

Yes.. work backwards through the installation process.

Actually, I do know how to reverse the applied insertions but I ran the install_v1-1.php which executes queries. I do not know to reverse that. I'd greatly appreciate it if you could help me out.

Thanks

[seidel]

Hi!, this is an excellent modification! but is not working for me...

I have vbulletin 3.0.1, install and change the paths in articlebot.php and setup CRON in my server...

The bot is not working, no write post... I need this RSS http://lists.upperdeck.com/read/rss?forum=judge-yu

please helpme!!!!

thanks in advance

[kadafi_alive]

Come on,

there has be to someone out there who knows how to un-install this hack. I'd greatly appreciate it!!!!!!!

[poolking]

Come on,

there has be to someone out there who knows how to un-install this hack. I'd greatly appreciate it!!!!!!!
There are no automatic uninstall scripts, you have to undo every step you did.

[seidel]

when run articlebot.php receive this message:

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (not well-formed (invalid token) at line 3890, column 23) in /home/nutripac/public_html/yugioh/vbulletin/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 237

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/nutripac/public_html/yugioh/vbulletin/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/nutripac/public_html/yugioh/vbulletin/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141

Please helpme!

[poolking]

when run articlebot.php receive this message:

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (not well-formed (invalid token) at line 3890, column 23) in /home/nutripac/public_html/yugioh/vbulletin/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 237

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/nutripac/public_html/yugioh/vbulletin/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/nutripac/public_html/yugioh/vbulletin/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141


Please helpme! I get that sometimes, don't think it has anything to do with the article bot itself but the feed its receiving.

[poolking]

Come on,

there has be to someone out there who knows how to un-install this hack. I'd greatly appreciate it!!!!!!! Do you know how to use phpmyadmin? It should be available from your site's control panel.

Run the following queries:

DROP TABLE articlebot
DROP TABLE articlebot_rss
DROP TABLE articlebot_rss_cache

then go into the 'thread' table and remove this field:

is_rss

Then look at the installation instructions that came with the hack and reverse everything that you have done.

Simplest way if you don't have too many hacks would be to re-upload un-hacked versions of the files changed in the hack.

Then re-apply any other hacks.

REMEMBER TO BACK UP YOUR DATABASE BEFORE ATTEMPTING ANY OF THE ABOVE.

[rajc007]

I know I am missing something small but I can't seem to figure it out. I'm getting the following error when trying to add a new articlebot:

Error: There is no user with ID of 0.

Thx

[poolking]

I know I am missing something small but I can't seem to figure it out. I'm getting the following error when trying to add a new articlebot:

Error: There is no user with ID of 0.

Thx
For a start you cannot have a user id of 0.

You have to create a user first then assign the bot to the user you've just created.

[rajc007]

For a start you cannot have a user id of 0.

You have to create a user first then assign the bot to the user you've just created.

I have a registered user that I tried to assign the bot to, but I am getting the same error.

[poolking]

I have a registered user that I tried to assign the bot to, but I am getting the same error.
What is the id of the user?

[rajc007]

What is the id of the user?

Do you mean just the name of the user? It's just Hotel News.

[Tenny]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, i'm pretty sure it has, but I don't have time to read 34 pages of messages...

Is there anyway to change it so that the forum the RSS Bot posts in, doesn't come up in the "New Posts" and stuff like that? Becuase the bot is spamming soo much, it's hard to see what has been posted by actual members of the community.

[Torqued]

Not sure if this has been posted yet, i'm pretty sure it has, but I don't have time to read 34 pages of messages...


Is there anyway to change it so that the forum the RSS Bot posts in, doesn't come up in the "New Posts" and stuff like that? Becuase the bot is spamming soo much, it's hard to see what has been posted by actual members of the community.

Like this:

You can exclude forums from the search by adding the red code:


http://www.yoursite.com/forum/search.php?do=getnew&exclude=X,Y,Z


Where X,Y,Z is a comma-separated list of forumids you want to exclude.

[Tenny]

sweet thanks! Works like a charm... now i" just gotta edit vbadvanced to add that into the 'latest topics' and i'm pretty sure it'll be a simliar way of doing it. And the Welcome CP back in Vbadvanced... guess i'll do that at work today :)

thanks agian :)

[Tenny]

Well I found out in the vBa CMPS there is an option to exclude certain forums, so i did that.

But there still is one problem.

In the Template for vBa CMPS: adv_portal_welcomeblock

<if condition="$vba_options['portal_welcome_newposts']"><a href="$vboptions[bburl]/search.php?$session[sessionurl]do=getnew&exclude=113">$vbphrase[new_posts]</a>: $newposts <br /></if>


Well I did the Exclude on the forum I don't want, but the $newposts is just a number, and I don't know how to exclude that. I wouldn't mind but for me I'm sitting there seeing there are 15 new posts, but when I click that, i only see 2 or so threads.

Anyone have any Idea's on how to do that?

[poolking]

Do you mean just the name of the user? It's just Hotel News.

No the userid, i.e. the number of the user.

[yoyoyoyo]

The bot seems to be working fine- great hack! However - it is only bringing back bits and not the full article:

http://img180.exs.cx/img180/7021/partialfeed9yz.jpg

How can I set it to post the full article, and not just the first part. Is that the RSS feed's fault, or is there a setting somewhere to allow it to post the full article?

[Tenny]

That's the RSS Feeds fault

[yoyoyoyo]

That's the RSS Feeds faultso the trick is finding a good RSS feed I see.. hmmm.. that will be the tricky part :rolleyes:

[poolking]

The feeds aren't supposed to post the full article. You could be breaking copyrights if you attempt to post the full article.

[yoyoyoyo]

The feeds aren't supposed to post the full article. You could be breaking copyrights if you attempt to post the full article.
I know that, but there is a different between a full article and a broken feed with half a post!

[Torqued]

The feeds aren't supposed to post the full article. You could be breaking copyrights if you attempt to post the full article.

Did you know that you can turn searches @ http://search.news.yahoo.com into RSS feeds? do a search and then look for "View as RSS" in the right sidebar.