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.

[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]

Originally Posted by 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

Find the following code in articlebot.php:

PHP Code:

SET posts = posts + $user_posts 


replace with:

PHP Code:

SET posts = posts