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.

[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]

Originally Posted by iKwak

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]

Originally Posted by School-Help

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]

Originally Posted by Lionel

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