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.

[rex_b]

when I run /articlebot/articlebot.php I get this :

Warning: chdir(): No such file or directory (errno 2) in /home/rexb2/public_html/forum/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 42

Warning: main(./global.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/rexb2/public_html/forum/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 43

Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required './global.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/rexb2/public_html/forum/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 43

[rex_b]

fixed .. I'm an idiot.

[rex_b]

ok I ran the articlebot.php and it posted 1 article. So I changed the fetch in the admincp to 5 per interval and ran the articlbot.php again and nothing happend.

Any guesses?

[rinkrat]

Try changing the interval to less that it is. I have a special forum for the articles so I just cranked the fetch to 15 and the interval to 1 minute.

Speaking of this, is there a way I can just have it get ALL the articles and post them immediately?

[rinkrat]

I was checking out the posting times of the bot and realized that my cron isn't working but the scheduled task in VB admin is working. So I'll just go with the one in the control panel I guess.

[rinkrat]

Originally Posted by Velocd

KW802, add the template to your default style.

As for that error, check articlebot.php, and make sure you configured the absolute paths correctly.



Execute articlebot.php in your browser. No errors? There shouldn't be any if you configured the paths correctly.

For those using vB's scheduled tasks, I'll look into making Article Bot more integrated with it (the hack was not built for it).. although I can't guarantee it'll be anytime soon.

I do recommend you use a real cron setup anyway (if you're on a NIX server, via your cPanel or shell), instead of vbulletin's system.

Since the adminCP works for me I'll be waiting for this. It's way easier for most people if you can do it from the admin menu. at least it works so that's what really matters.

[klassicd]

This is the greatest MOD ever made. I love you.

See mine in action here: www.thepokerpost.com

For anyone using PHP 4.3.0 are earlier add this function to the top of articlebot.php.

PHP Code:

 if (!function_exists('html_entity_decode')) {
  function html_entity_decode ($string, $opt = ENT_COMPAT) {
   $trans_tbl = get_html_translation_table (HTML_ENTITIES);
   $trans_tbl = array_flip ($trans_tbl);
   if ($opt & 1) { // Translating single quotes
     // Add single quote to translation table;
     // doesn't appear to be there by default
     $trans_tbl["'"] = "'";
   }
   if (!($opt & 2)) { // Not translating double quotes
     // Remove double quote from translation table
     unset($trans_tbl["""]);
   }
   return strtr ($string, $trans_tbl);
  }
}
// Just to be safe ;o)
if (!defined("ENT_COMPAT")) define("ENT_COMPAT", 2);
if (!defined("ENT_NOQUOTES")) define("ENT_NOQUOTES", 0);
if (!defined("ENT_QUOTES")) define("ENT_QUOTES", 3); 


[fonzerelli_79]

installed this with no errors and on the surface everything seems to be ok

but no posts are being made by the blogs etc

ive used cron and the include in the php end template

the forum room isnt live - eg its display order is set to 0, but that shouldnt make a difference

what are the first things to check if posts arent being made

any help would be appreciated

[Code Monkey]

I installed this and it is fantastic. Thanks alot. I did have a problem with some code in the feed I am parsing. As well as keeping bold charecters intact. But I solved it by adding the following code.

I found

PHP Code:

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


and added above.

PHP Code:

$article['description'] = str_replace('<b>', '[b]', $article['description']);
$article['description'] = str_replace('</b>', '[/b]', $article['description']);
$article['description'] = str_replace('</b>', '[/b]', $article['description']);
$article['description'] = str_replace('<b>', '[b]', $article['description']);
$article['description'] = str_replace('<br />', "\n\r", $article['description']);
$article['description'] = str_replace('&lt;br /&gt;', "\n\r", $article['description']); 


And everything was fine. Thanks again for the great hack.

[alexisbellido]

Hi, I will give this hack a try in order to update my forum with the new entries in my blogs. I am not sure about the HTML support, most of my blog entries have links, will these still work?