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.

[dsboyce8624]

Originally Posted by dsboyce8624

Would one of you please point me to where on your systems these posts are going so I can have a look?

Anybody?

[thuffner]

Originally Posted by dsboyce8624

Anybody?

http://www.bondmovies.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=44

There ya go.

[dsboyce8624]

Originally Posted by thuffner

http://www.bondmovies.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=44

There ya go.

Thanks man.

[H@K@N]

Hi @ll,

after i upgraded to php 5.0.4 my RSS Feed looks strange.

As example:

Internet Explorer bazı javascript kodlarını düzgün i?�leyemiyor. Bunun sonucunda uzaktaki bir kullanıcı özel bir HTML sayfası hazırlayarak çalı?�an script kodunu (View Source fonksiyonunda) gizleyebiliyor. Orjinal script kodu görüntülenece?�ine IE script'in çıktısını görüntülüyor.

I am using turkish character set and its working on my Forums, but on my Feeds i am gettin wrong characters.

The XML of that RSS is saying:

<item>
-
	<title>
[MS] Microsoft Internet Explorer script kodu gizleme a?ığı
</title>
<link>http://www.olympos.org/article/view/1463/</link>
-
	<description>
Internet Explorer bazı javascript kodlarını d?zg?n işleyemiyor. Bunun sonucunda uzaktaki bir kullanıcı ?zel bir HTML sayfası hazırlayarak ?alışan script kodunu (View Source fonksiyonunda) gizleyebiliyor. Orjinal script kodu g?r?nt?leneceğine IE script'in ?ıktısını g?r?nt?l?yor.
</description>
</item>

Does somebody know, how i can solve this ? On php.ini i have default_charset = ISO-8859-9.


gr33tz

[altsounds]

OK, I don't know if anyone has heard of tapestry but it is a way to get Daily Comics in your forums. If you look at the xml of the rss feeds (version2.0) you will see that the description is actually an <img> tag pulling in an image from outside.

However, article bot does not work with these. It skips the description all together i.e. the comic and just shows the link.

If someone could figure out how to get this to work it would be awesome@!!!!

[L3e]

This mod is awesome!

But I have a quick question, (sorry if it has already been answered) is it possible to have a different template for different RSS feeds?

[mr.nerve]

Hi,

I'm very new to this, but I have managed to get the bots to work, but they seem to be giving me errors as listed below.

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (junk after document element at line 195, column 16) in /articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (junk after document element at line 206, column 16) in /articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (junk after document element at line 202, column 16) in /articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (junk after document element at line 212, column 16) in /articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141

This appears at the top of the main forum page after the rssbots update

Other than that message at the top of the forums, they seem to work, but do not post a link in thier thread, or even a description. I will have to do more looking into that, but I am using ESPN and FOX sports for the feeds, and not sure how much info they provide.

But, any assistance you could offer on the above errors would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you.
NeRVe

[NxTek]

I've setup everything correctly as far as I know. I'm trying to grab the feed from http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/pokerblog/index.rdf but after running articlebot.php from the command-line and through a web browser both have no output.

How can I start troubleshooting what the problem is?

[NxTek]

Originally Posted by wmturkey

Can anyone help me with the cache errors below?

Thanks!

Cache unable to open file for writing: ./cache/3f337277b2b2cfd6fcc0a0b953d1b88b
Cache unable to open file for writing: ./cache/e905c9ebbb58c522239df9bfa6cea4cc
Cache unable to open file for writing: ./cache/faa381df8ef97ebee0b979afaf6a08a7
Cache unable to open file for writing: ./cache/7c5945d293bb83bcffa25ccb26f741c5
Cache unable to open file for writing: ./cache/6965bb7e2cd199c6cebfcca7b0c15c30
Cache unable to open file for writing: ./cache/e872bc0799d39b02da412a1fe5bed1ec
Cache unable to open file for writing: ./cache/07199ba6b997fbb1322d6ef8f559a51b
Cache unable to open file for writing: ./cache/a3fcd87a0c09a0edcc94c99bcd7279eb
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.4
Set-Cookie: bbsessionhash=be8fe0a5677cbc5b73899fd4408e4222; path=/
Set-Cookie: bblastvisit=1116586861; expires=Sat, 20-May-2006 11:01:01 GMT; path=/
Set-Cookie: bblastactivity=1116586861; expires=Sat, 20-May-2006 11:01:01 GMT; path=/
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

I'm getting the same thing. Anyone?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Check if you have a 'cache' directory and that it is chmodded to 777.