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Article Bot · **Released**: 07-10-2004

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.

kyouens · #**612** 05-01-2005, 05:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by greenhybrid

Can I see? I don't see a demo anywhere. Thanks.

Look at the front page of my site.

Boom.

The site is still being constructed (aren't they all . . .) but the articlebot is working. I am using a custom template for the articlebot forum, that's why you don't see all the reply buttons, post numbers, etc.

greenhybrid · #**613** 05-01-2005, 06:09 AM

Is there a reason why the vBullein scheduled tasks aren't working for this? I used ./articlebot/articlebot.php and tried to run it, but there were no results.

kyouens · #**614** 05-01-2005, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by greenhybrid

Is there a reason why the vBullein scheduled tasks aren't working for this? I used ./articlebot/articlebot.php and tried to run it, but there were no results.

If possible, it's best to run this using a regular server cron job (eg. /usr/local/bin/php /home/whatever/vbulletin/articlebot/articlebot.php). That's how I have mine set up and it works great. Also, if you do it this way, there are not the interspersed pauses whenever an unlucky user loads a page when it's time for a feed update.

greenhybrid · #**615** 05-01-2005, 04:48 PM

I'll look into that. It did start working, however.
I see there are like 15 scheduled tasts by other hacks. They haven't caused any load problems like you mention...?

kyouens · #**616** 05-01-2005, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by greenhybrid

I'll look into that. It did start working, however.
I see there are like 15 scheduled tasts by other hacks. They haven't caused any load problems like you mention...?

Hmm..actually I think you're right about not having the interspersed updates when you use the vbulletin cron. I know you DO get them if you have an include for articlebot.php on your forum home, for example, though.

One other drawback of having them in your vbulletin cron is that if your forum isn't very busy, it won't get updated often. Someone has to use your vbulletin for your vbulletin cron to work. I guess the upside is that it's easy to set up. . .

Layne SMith · #**617** 05-02-2005, 02:41 PM

I noticed one of my feeds wasn't working and when I sent it through Feed Validator I got this error ...

Code:

Your feed appears to be encoded as "UTF-8", but your server is reporting "US-ASCII"

Is this something Article Bot can account for?

Thanks,
Layne

greenhybrid · #**618** 05-02-2005, 02:55 PM

Can someone please explain the difference between the cron and the post interval? Right now I created a custom RSS for certain Google News terms and its results are both ever-changing and unpredictable. I've set the cron for every hour and the interval for every 5 minutes or so. Also, I set the amount to process at each time for 1, the default and recommendation. Does this mean that if there's duplicates, they won't be posted and only 1 can be posted every 5 minutes?

kyouens · #**619** 05-02-2005, 09:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by greenhybrid

Can someone please explain the difference between the cron and the post interval? Right now I created a custom RSS for certain Google News terms and its results are both ever-changing and unpredictable. I've set the cron for every hour and the interval for every 5 minutes or so. Also, I set the amount to process at each time for 1, the default and recommendation. Does this mean that if there's duplicates, they won't be posted and only 1 can be posted every 5 minutes?

The cron and postinterval thing is kind of confusing. I have my articlebot.php set to run (via a server cron job) every five minutes. However, I have my post intervals set to anywhere between 120 minutes to 3600 minutes. So what happens is that the articlebot.php runs every 5 minutes, but I have my rss feeds "staggered". If the postinterval has elapsed for any of my given feeds THAT FEED gets updated while the others do not. Each time articlebot.php is run, maybe only 1-2 of my feeds' postinterval is up.

The amount to process I set to like 20 or something. For example, if your feed has 3 NEW posts and yours is set to 20, it will download only those 3 new posts. But if your amount is set to 1 and your feed gets 3 new ones, it will only grab one of them (each time it runs.)

Confusing.
Kenny

kyouens · #**620** 05-02-2005, 09:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Layne SMith

I noticed one of my feeds wasn't working and when I sent it through Feed Validator I got this error ...

Code:

Your feed appears to be encoded as "UTF-8", but your server is reporting "US-ASCII"

Is this something Article Bot can account for?

Thanks,
Layne

Are you talking about the feeds that articlebot enters into the forums (i.e. external feeds)? Or are you talking about a feed of YOUR page. If you're talking about an external feed, articlebot doesn't have anything to do with the content of the file it processes. I don't know whether it converts the "non-valid" (but still useable) feeds into valid XML.

greenhybrid · #**621** 05-02-2005, 09:11 PM

So, the postintervals tell the cron whether to process the threads at that time, correct?

Earlier today, my bot posted the same article 3 times. How can this be prevented?

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