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

[will_lean]

hello ive just done the code edit above to try and limit the number of posts the rss bot posts but it doesnt seem to be working,i only need 10 news items posted but its posting over 100 :surprised:
any idea why the above wouldnt work?
ive set my cron to 24hr update

[Slapyo]

in rss_update.php FIND:

PHP Code:

        // insert the new items into the database
        for($j = count($rss_allItems) - 1; $j >= 0; $j--) { 


REPLACE WITH:

PHP Code:

        // insert the new items into the database
        for($j = 10 - 1; $j >= 0; $j--) { 


you are replacing "count($rss_allItems)" with the number of news articles you want. in the example code above i replaced it with 10. so it will take the 10 news articles and post them. however, i don't know if this will be a problem or not because if there are only like 5 news articles and you have hard coded in 10 news articles it might pose a problem.

[will_lean]

thanks

ive set it so i can moderate the posts from the yahoo feed so i can pick 10 feeds and prune the rest.

WICKED hack!
thanks

[Slapyo]

newest version: 1.24 (PHP > 4.3.0) and 1.24a (PHP < 4.3.0)

i rewrote the way Delete All News was done. it now uses a function within vB to delete the posts rather than a manual deletion of them. helps keep everything neat. it will also recount the posts in the forum.

[yeloc]

Is there a way not to add the news posts to the total posts number?

[Slapyo]

the original one did not increase the post count. but search and similiar threads didn't work either. i don't offer support for either of those. there has been numerous fixes and upgrades to the way things work. i would suggest that you use the modified original version if you are going to use one of them. it is more stable than the original.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=60899 - original
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=139 - modified original

[yeloc]

what would I be doing wrong? The task is not updating on its own. It works fine when I hit the "run now" button. I have it set to run every hour.

[Slapyo]

do you have a busy forum? i found the way that the cron jobs work in vB is that say you have a list of cron jobs 10 long. the page has to be loaded at or after the scheduled time for the cron job. my forum isn't too busy now and i found to get it to run i have to just reload the page a few times and the news will be inserted. mine is set to run at the hour every hour. if it hasn't run, i look in the scheduled tasks to see how many jobs before it haven't run yet. then i refresh the forums that many times.

[yeloc]

Actually no this is a test forum that I setup.

[Slapyo]

then that might be the problem. it's not actually a true cron job which will run on the hour every hour. you have to have the pages being loaded to check for the next cron job time. if it is time, or past time, it will run...next page load checks for the next cron job.