NEW Modified RSS News Feed Hack

Hack originally posted by: Xyphen - RSS News Feed Hack
Modified by: wolfstream - Modified RSS News Feed Hack

I am posting this up as a new hack because of the major changes made to how the script works. Also, I didn't want people to get confused as to which one to download since there were 3 different versions on the original post.

Xyphen released the original version, then wolfstream modified the script and corrected some errors. After that, I modified wolfstreams version to change how posts were inserted. Now the post count will increase, posts will be able to be searched, and similiar threads will work.

RSS News Feed Hack for vB 3.0.x. As long as vBulletin doesn't change the database structure much, this should be good for the next release also, and those to come.

Allows you to have a live RSS news feed (such as one from Google or CNET) in a forum. The user that posts it will basically be a bot, which *should* only be used for posting the news, but you can even make it for a regular user.

Comments are welcome! Support provided through this thread.

Latest Version:
- 1.26 - for PHP 4.3.0 & above
- 1.26a - for PHP prior to 4.3.0

vBulletin Versions:
- 3.0.0
- 3.0.1

PHP Versions:
- > 4.3.0
- < 4.3.0

Installation Overview:
- Files to edit: (2) /admincp/index.php, /includes/functions_newpost.php
- Files to upload: (4) rss.php, admincp/rss_admin.php, includes/RSS/class.RSS.php, includes/RSS/rss_update.php
- Queries to run: (4) in rss_install.php

History:
Version 1.26 (23 June 2004 - Slapyo, Natch)
- listing of bot's more intuitive (Natch)
- hopefully fixed duplicate problem (Slapyo)
- stripped html tags from title and description (Slapyo)

Version 1.25 (12 May 2004 - Slapyo)
- fix for &quot; showing up
- logs action in scheduled task log if turned on

Version 1.24 (20 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- posts now deleted with delete_thread function
- post counts updated when using delete all news

Version 1.23 (14 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- added ability to delete bots
- cleaned up includes
- fix for PHP versions prior to 4.3.0 calling html_entity_decode()

Version 1.22 (13 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- duplicate posts problem fixed
- fix for problem with ' appearing as \'

Version 1.21 (12 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- bot will not be subscribed to posts now

Version 1.2 (11 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- posts now inserted with build_new_post function

Version 1.1 (28 March 2004 - wolfstream)
- file edits taken down to 1
- cron script included

Version 1.0 (28 January 2004 - Xyphen)
- original release

Common RSS Feeds:
- Yahoo!
- CNET.com
- BBC
- Wired News
- The Register
- Ars Technica
- All Headline News

[Bobby S]

Originally Posted by Bobby S

http://sport.scotsman.com/football_h...cfm?format=rss

some of the stories have an apostrophe "Hibees' strike stars will be battling it out for Riordan's crown"

and these stories are repeating and the ' is being replaced by

"Hibees&#x27; strike stars will be battling it out for Riordan&#x27;s crown"

Any ideas?

I'm going to try manually editing the topic titles as they come in: that would hopefully solve that problem in the meantime. I'll let you know if that works.

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by Bobby S

I've had a think about my problem using feeds without a publication date.

Would it be possible to modify the code, so that it only checks for similarly titled threads? Without any date checking? I think that would solve my problems at least for the meantime

here you go, in rss_update.php:

FIND:

PHP Code:

        // filter out the old items
        while($rss_thread_data = $DB_site->fetch_array($rss_query)) {
            for($j = count($rss_allItems) - 1; $j >= 0; $j--) {
                if($rss_thread_data[title] == $rss_allItems[$j][TITLE] &&
                   $rss_thread_data[rss_date] == $rss_allItems[$j][pubDate]) {
                    $rss_allItems[$j][OLD] = true;
                }
            }
        } 


REPLACE WITH:

PHP Code:

        // filter out the old items
        while($rss_thread_data = $DB_site->fetch_array($rss_query)) {
            for($j = count($rss_allItems) - 1; $j >= 0; $j--) {
                if($rss_thread_data[title] == $rss_allItems[$j][TITLE]) {
                    $rss_allItems[$j][OLD] = true;
                }
            }
        } 


[Erwin]

Anyone seen this? I get this as a cron error every hour:

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/public_html/includes/functions_newpost.php on line 690

I suspect one of the news feed is timing out. Is there a way to prevent this error being emailed to me every hour if a news feed times out?

Just wondering, and thanks for the hack.

[Slapyo]

hm, i think you would have to add in a script to watch the time and if the execution time hit 29 seconds to stop. not sure exactly how to put that in though.

[checknme12]

Stange... I have the newest version of the hack installed but I am still getting duplicate stories. Anyone know why this might happen? I went to bed and now I have like 7 stories saying "Intel's 3D divorce rate" and another 7 duplicating another story and so on. The duplicates are not in a row.

Please help My bot is nuts.

[Slapyo]

what is the link to your RSS feed?

[Kraydl]

I found this mod for RSS feeds. The code may help you discover how others tackle the post duplication problem.

http://www.w3reports.com/forumfeeds.php

[dethfire]

Originally Posted by Kraydl

I found this mod for RSS feeds. The code may help you discover how others tackle the post duplication problem.

http://www.w3reports.com/forumfeeds.php

looks like it's the same script... copyright issues?

[Slapyo]

that was one of the original rss feed scripts that doesn't insert the news with the function built into vB. no search works, no post counts go up, nada.

[smsmasters]

I get 30 second max execution errors on my forum at www.smsmasters.co.uk My members got so fed with 17 pages worth of news in Today's Posts. Is there a way to stop these posts appearing in Today's Posts or New Posts???