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.

[KW802]

Originally Posted by RetroDreams

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by 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]

Originally Posted by 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) :



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

Manquish, 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.