Article Bot

Article Bot
by velocd


Article Bot is a script that allows you to assign a user account (preferably an exclusive one) to an article bot that will post RSS feeds in select forums at designated intervals. These articles are derived from RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds.

RSS files are assigned to article bots, as well to individual forums, which in turn directs what, when and where your article bot will post.

Features

• Works with RSS versions: 0.9x, 2.0, 1.0, and Atom 0.3
• AdminCP interface for adding/modifying/deleting article bots & rss feeds
• Designate intervals (in minutes) to each RSS feed for when your article bot will post them.
• Requires only 1 file edit (admincp/index.php), allowing ease of upgrading your vBulletin
  without having to remodify files.
• Easy to install. Works best in conjunction with crontab (contab help is inside install.html)

News

• 7/25/04 - Version 1.1 Released
  • Bug Fixes
    • Replaced htmlspecialchars() with htmlentities() in articlebot.php to fully convert special entities from descriptions.
    • Added trim() to thread titles, to prevent double threads from being posted that are merely off by whitespace.
    • New table articlebot_rss_cache for storing a copy of article bot threads, for quicker checking of doubles when posting new threads.
    • Threads are checked in articlebot_rss_cache, so you can permanently remove them from the thread table (you don't have to "soft delete") without worrying about the bot replicating them.
    • Other minor bugs.
  • Features
    • New installer/upgraders for doing the SQL part automatically.
    • Added "label" field to add/modify RSS interface, that allows you to tag a label, e.g. [yahoo], to the beginning of threads, unique to each RSS feed. This might help for better distinction of RSS feeds.
    • Added an option to toggle on/off of building similar threads per RSS feed. Some RSS feeds could hault the script if the building of similar thread results for that feed takes too long (maybe the article thread title is too vague, and matches a lot of results--my guess is it's only a problem on large forums).
    • Added an option to toggle on/off skipping of articles that don't contain descriptions.
    • Regular expression search and replace for article titles and descriptions. This grants you much flexability to filter out things you don't want in your titles or descriptions (given you have some regex experience, I will try to post some patterns in due time.. feel free to add yours )
• 7/11/04 - Version 1.0 Released

Upgrading

• To upgrade, reupload the new PHP and MagpieRSS parser files to their places on your server. Upload upgrade_vx-x (replace the x's with the version you are upgrading to) to /path/to/forums/admincp/, and then execute that script.

Files

• 3 screenshots attached
• articlebot_v1.zip
  • install.html, logo.gif
  • articlebot_admin.php
  • articlebot/
    • rss_cache.inc
    • rss_fetch.inc
    • rss_parse.inc
    • rss_utils.inc
    • extlib/
      • Snoopy.class.inc

RSS Feeds

There are several in the install.html, but if you're looking for more than you could ever want, check out NewsIsFree's directory:

http://www.newsisfree.com/sources/bycat/


Remember to click install if you use this hack.

Also be sure to read through the what you haven't of the thread before asking a question, for it may have been answered.

[Natch]

Any chance we can have a Thread prefix to each posted thread - with a Title for each Feed ? - it would involve a new field for each Feed with a Short Title, but I reckon it would be worth it

What do you reckon VeloCD ?

[KW802]

Originally Posted by KW802

Cool, I guessed the template thing right at least. I added it to my default style thinking that since it was using global.php that it'd use whatever the default was.

I tried the directory name in articlebot.php first, even ended up hard-coding the full path and still get the same error.

Below is what the code at http://www.farpointstation.org/forum...articlebot.php currently is but is still producing the same error.

chdir('/home/farpointstation/www/forums/');
require_once '/home/farpointstation/www/forums/global.php';
include_once '/home/farpointstation/www/forums/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc';

I'm stumped. :ermm: I figured I'd try running it directly from the browser first to rule that it wasn't my cron job.

Any thoughts appreciated. :nervous:

Thanks,
Kevin

Well, I've installed a fresh copy of the articlebot files and have grep'ed all files in the /forums folder and I still get the error pointing to the relative directory; it's almost as if something is calculating the system path intead of using the hard-coded values.

The one hack that I really wanted to install and of, of course, Murphy's Law has to intervene. :tired:

[rinkrat]

I just changed the top one and left the other two the way they came.

[rinkrat]

Originally Posted by Natch

Any chance we can have a Thread prefix to each posted thread - with a Title for each Feed ? - it would involve a new field for each Feed with a Short Title, but I reckon it would be worth it

What do you reckon VeloCD ?

The newest version does that already silly goose!

[Natch]

Originally Posted by rinkrat

The newest version does that already silly goose!

I do feel a goose - anticipating my requests like that - nice work Velo!

[SnowBot]

Originally Posted by Velocd

Snowbot, chdir needs to be pointing to your forums, not the articlebot directory.

As printed in the code.

// Provide absolute server path to forums.
// e.g. /home/cjohn/public_html/forums/
 
chdir('/path/to/forums/');
require_once './global.php';

Yes sorry i realised that this morning and changed it, i had just come back from the pub when i posted lol

BUT it still doesnt post No errors when i run the file, its set up on google RSS feed and has been set to post every 120m, its been active for 5h and still no post. Any suggestions?

[Velocd]

Snowbot, do you have a cron setup to execute the script every 120 minutes?

Even though each feed has a period in minutes at which it's posted, all feeds wont be posted if the articlebot.php script isn't executed every now and then.

What you should do is get an average in minutes from all your rss feeds, and then set a cron script to execute the articlebot.php at that average.

For me, most of my RSS feeds are at a period from 400 minutes to 600 minutes. So I have a cron script to execute articlebot.php every 500 minutes.

If this still doesn't work, try a more active RSS feed, like a Yahoo! news one. I don't recall Google updating it's RSS feeds very often (although, this shouldn't be a factor to why it isn't posting...)

[KW802]

Yes! Got it working....... I.... am... so... f'ing... happy! :banana:

This morning it struck me -- It wasn't the path that it wasn't liking but the actual PHP command it was issuing. Big item there. Did a little poking and found a few things....

The command "array_change_key_case" is only available as of PHP 4.2.0 and above. Well, turns out that my hosted provider is running 4.0.6! AAaaaaaggghhh!!!!! The same with "html_entity_decode" -- only available as of 4.3.0 and above. I commented out those two commands, ran the articlebot.php from my browser, and it worked.

Now I have to go harass my provider about updating their PHP. :ermm:

[SnowBot]

Originally Posted by Velocd

Snowbot, do you have a cron setup to execute the script every 120 minutes?

Even though each feed has a period in minutes at which it's posted, all feeds wont be posted if the articlebot.php script isn't executed every now and then.

What you should do is get an average in minutes from all your rss feeds, and then set a cron script to execute the articlebot.php at that average.

For me, most of my RSS feeds are at a period from 400 minutes to 600 minutes. So I have a cron script to execute articlebot.php every 500 minutes.

If this still doesn't work, try a more active RSS feed, like a Yahoo! news one. I don't recall Google updating it's RSS feeds very often (although, this shouldn't be a factor to why it isn't posting...)

Well thats sorted it I had the cron set up for every 6 hours not 60minutes..LOL stupid me...

Sorry for the messing around and thanks for pointing me in the right direction All works great.

[rex_b]

I installed the hack and set the bot timer to 1 min just to see if it will post something.

I am using this feed: http://www.religionnewsblog.com/b2rss.php

but
I didn't set any contrab thing b/c I have no idea what that is, I just want the bot to post every damn 120 min but it won't post even after 1 min.

What could I be doing wrong?