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.

[yellow281]

"It all depends on the feeds. The point of the RSS feeds is usually to draw someone to the site where the news is posted, not to provide content to other sites for free. Some RSS Feeds are very thorough, but for the most part they are simply the headline, and a short blurb and a link to the article. If you are continually getting broken feeds, or partial posts then it is a bad news feed, and that is another issue, and it can be fixed by getting a different/better RSS feed"

The post shows ONLY a title in the title bar and no URL, description or any kind of post at all. I have gone through everypage on this hack and others have had the same issues but no one seems to have provided a definitive answer. I have tried with known feeds that work and the same problem for everyone of them. Title in the title bar, but no post at all.

It has to be something with the way this is set up. Can someone explain exactly where articlebot_post is supposed to be uploaded to, what type of file its supposed to be and exactly what the full contents of the file should look like. I am pretty certain this is where the error lies and a bunch of us just arent as smart and as intuitive as you coders Pretty please!

Thanks

[pieman666]

Could you check the feeds with a 'normal' rss reader, and see what you should be getting in your forums. If it is different then it could be a problem with the forum code, if not then it's the feeds limitation.

[yellow281]

Checked the feeds multiple times, its about 12 different feeds from reliable sources and they read fine in other readers. I have also tried feeds that people here have said are working for them. Its an issue with the configuration somewhere. If anyone has any idea or managed to fix this, I would be eternally grateful.

Literally, I think if someone that has this working could display the contents of their articlebot_post template (page) and tell me exactly where it needs to be uploaded and in what file format then this could cure the problem. Im certain its something to do with that.

Thanks

Kate

[No Harmony]

Originally Posted by Beermonster

... I had it working fine but since I've upgraded to 3.0.6 and reinstalled it all I get is
Error: There is no file located at http://www.wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,31,00.xml
when trying to add article

I get the same error on my vB 3.0.6, for any feed I am trying to add

[interfx]

Does this work with 3.0.6? Before I start installing, wanted to know...

Thanks

[yoyoyoyo]

Originally Posted by yellow281

Literally, I think if someone that has this working could display the contents of their articlebot_post template (page) and tell me exactly where it needs to be uploaded and in what file format then this could cure the problem. Im certain its something to do with that.

Thanks

Kate

The templates are all in the directions. They are templates, not pages, so they are not uploaded- they are added via the Admin control panel: Styles & Templates -> Style Manager -> Add New Template ->

Originally Posted by interfx

Does this work with 3.0.6? Before I start installing, wanted to know...

Thanks

yep!

[No Harmony]

If this works with 3.0.6, then what could be the cause of the problem with feeds?

[mskgr]

Originally Posted by mrslugger

I've tried to get this to work, but if I try to add a feed it says "No file located at... whatever the url is"

Am I doing something wrong. I've put the url in exactly as it says and everything.

As I have the same problem on my vB3 Installation, I tried to find out the cause of those symptomps. The error your are reffering to is the :

Error:&nbsp; There is no file located at <i>$rss_path</i>

Which is on line 735, of articlebot_admin.php

The error is displayed when the following is true - if (!$rss = @file_get_contents($rss_path)) - Unfortunately, according to php.net, filget_get_contents requires allow_url_fopen on php.ini script of your server to be turned ON. As this is a potential security risk, I really don't want to enable the wrapper for external files, so I didn't mess with my php.ini script. In addition, magpie doesn't need fopen for getting RSS's contents.

So, I went to line 735 and commented out that check...

Problem solved, script works fine...

[MikaK]

I have this hack installed on a 3.0.3 board and keep getting a cron daemon message like this:

From: "Cron Daemon" <>
To:
Subject: Cron <xxx@server> /usr/bin/curl http://soundchilds.net/loud_lounge/a...articlebot.php >/dev/null
Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 13:35:06 -0800

% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time
Curr.
Dload Upload Total Current Left
Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- 0:00:01
--:--:-- 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- 0:00:02
--:--:-- 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- 0:00:03
--:--:-- 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- 0:00:04
--:--:-- 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- 0:00:05
--:--:-- 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- 0:00:06
--:--:-- 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- 0:00:06
--:--:-- 0

Any idea what might cause it and how it could be corrected?
###EDIT###
It looks like the script delivers all properly despite the report. So... If this can not be corrected easily, how could I turn the cron report off?
#########

Thanks for any ideas!
-Mika

[Ninth Dimension]

Hi, I'm using this hack on my latest site, and I think it's fantastic.. I do have a question however, if you don't mind:

I notice that you've a 'Regex Search & Replace' built in, and thisis fantastic as I was hoping to be able to use it to replace new-lineswith spaces.

The two feeds I'm currently using(http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/oddlyenough andhttp://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/science) are putting a lot of newlinesinto the descriptions, and I want to remove them.. now I assume thatthe 'Regex Search & Replace' can do this... but I don't know whatcode to use.

Thank you