The Arcive of Official vBulletin Modifications Site.

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.

Velocd · #**102** 07-26-2004, 03:28 AM

Quote:

I do have a question. How do I delete to comments at the top and bottom of each article posted? They show up on the preview mouseover in the forumdisplay.

Not sure what you mean Rob Eh, could you give a live example, or elaborate more?

Deimos · #**103** 07-26-2004, 08:56 AM

Think you could possibly add the ability to read RDF files?
*begs*
hehe

Rob Eh · #**104** 07-26-2004, 12:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Velocd

Not sure what you mean Rob Eh, could you give a live example, or elaborate more?

It is actually posting the template comments as part of the message itself. These comments:


If I disable html in the post, which is deffenity the secure way, It will display these comments in the message preview when you mouseover the message hyperlink in the forumview page. If html is enabled in the post, it does not show up in the preview.

But it doesn't matter if html is enabled of disabled, it till shows up on my portal page that is created with vBadvanced CMPS v1.0.0.

This only way I can get it to dissappear is to disable the "Add Template Name in HTML Comments" in the General settings onm VB Options. to get it to stop.

Screen shots below.

#1 is a shot of the message when I view the edit post screen. I can't get a screen shot when attempting to preview.

#2 is a shot of the troubled area of the portal page.

My site is here:
http://forums.fu2.ca

Rob Eh · #**105** 07-26-2004, 12:19 PM

I will perform the upgrade to see if that helps.

Rob Eh · #**106** 07-26-2004, 12:40 PM

I am having problems with the upgrade. Every thing ran fine with the script and all, but I can't get articlebot.php to run.

After commenting out the lines:
// chdir('/path/to/forums/');
// require_once './global.php';

PHP Code:


			
Warning: main(.articlebot/rss_fetch.inc): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/virtual/site170/fst/var/www/html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 46



Warning: main(): Failed opening '.articlebot/rss_fetch.inc' for inclusion (include_path='.:/php/includes:/usr/share/php') in /home/virtual/site170/fst/var/www/html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 46



Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/virtual/site170/fst/var/www/html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 92

Now I change:

PHP Code:


			
include_once '.articlebot/rss_fetch.inc';

To

PHP Code:


			
include_once 'rss_fetch.inc';

Which just gives me this error:

PHP Code:


			
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/virtual/site170/fst/var/www/html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 92

Line 92 is this:

PHP Code:


			
    $result_articlebots = $DB_site->query("

Any thoughts, suggestions?

Thanks,

MindTrix · #**107** 07-26-2004, 01:06 PM

Simple you changed

PHP Code:


			
After commenting out the lines:

// chdir('/path/to/forums/');

to the wrong url hence all the errors with the long url. In your admin cp scroll down to the bottom left under the maintanance section and click on PHP INFO.

In there it will show you the url you need. For instance mine is

/home/general/public_html/forum/

Its under the Enviroment section of the PHP info.

Hope it helps.

Velocd · #**108** 07-26-2004, 01:27 PM

Rob Eh, as MindTrix said, you have to provide an absolute path to your forums directory for chdir(), don't comment it out (that is, if you're using crontab).

As for your problem with the comments, my question is why are there comments? I never added them to the template, nor did the instructions say for you to put them there.

I would just remove the comments.

Rob Eh · #**109** 07-26-2004, 02:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Velocd

Rob Eh, as MindTrix said, you have to provide an absolute path to your forums directory for chdir(), don't comment it out (that is, if you're using crontab).

I do have the corect path in it, but since it is commented out, it makes not difference. I'm not presently using crontab. I had the following line in my forum index.php page to run article bot.
include_once './articlebot/articlebot.php';

I plan to setup crontab in the coming days, but since it's been several years and different server setups ago since I used it, I wanted to get everything up and funning properly first. This worked fine for in in your first version before upgrading this morning.

If all else fails, I think I'm going to blow away the installation and start over again. I will drop all of the articlebot tables via phpMyAdmin. Then do a fresh install of the new version and see if that will cure it.

There has to be something wrong with one of the database tables, because the process stops when attempting to fetch article bots.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Velocd

As for your problem with the comments, my question is why are there comments? I never added them to the template, nor did the instructions say for you to put them there.

I would just remove the comments.

The comments are part of vB's setup. They do not show up incorrectly in any other of vB's templates.

When modifying templates, it is often helpful to have this setting enabled so you can view the source of a page to determine what template(s) control it.

It's not a big problem to have this disabled, but it is very strange as to why the comments for the templates are incorrectly showing up as part of the article post itself. I'm confused by it.

Rob Eh · #**110** 07-26-2004, 02:26 PM

I have taken screneshots of the structure of the 3 article bot tables, please the thread table that it altered. I do see something that maybe the problem. According to the upgrade script, it calls for the is_iss field to be deleted, but it is not deleted.

All of the articles that have currently been created with article bot have the is_rss field contain "1", the rss_date field is empty, and the rss_feed all contain "0".

Is the talbe scructure correct for these tables? Should the thread table have this structure and data?

Thanks,

Rob Eh · #**111** 07-26-2004, 02:27 PM

Here is the table_articlebot_rss.gif from the above post. Only 3 attachments per post.

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