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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.

alexisbellido · #**152** 08-02-2004, 03:02 AM

Hi, same problem as some of you in this thread, running articlebot.php manually does not give me any error, I followed exactly all the steps in the instructions but no post is being made by the bot. My feed is one generated by a Wordpress blog: http://www.ventanazul.com/weblog_en/feed/rss2/

Any ideas about what should I check?

Thanks!

Updated: It worked, just had to wait a few minutes, I did not understand the interval concept very well at first. Now it's working and it's great. My blog entries are being fed to my forum

Thanks a lot for this. Nice work!

fonzerelli_79 · #**153** 08-02-2004, 12:47 PM

alexis - everything is fine but unlike you i cant get the blogs to be imported to my forum

ive left the interval at the default of 120 - however, ive had articlebot up for a few days so im not sure how this can play any part in it?

weaver · #**154** 08-02-2004, 02:33 PM

Running /forums/articlebot/articlebot.php only brings up a white screen for me. Also, whenever I try to add an RSS feed I get an error:

Error: There is no file located at http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories

KW802 · #**155** 08-02-2004, 02:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snobbymom

Running /forums/articlebot/articlebot.php only brings up a white screen for me. Also, whenever I try to add an RSS feed I get an error:

Error: There is no file located at http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories

You get the white screen because the PHP file has no output, it just updates your tables after it parses the feeds.

Can't help ya' on the Yahoo thing, appears to be a good link.

weaver · #**156** 08-02-2004, 03:47 PM

Thanks... So the white screen means it's working correctly? So now I just have to figure out why it's not accepting any RSS feeds as being legitimate.

alexisbellido · #**157** 08-02-2004, 03:53 PM

White screen is ok for articlebot.php, in fact is a good sign that main settings are ok.

It's always good to confirm if your feed is ok with a feed reader (I use www.bloglines.com).

I was not getting any post into my forums and I did this: Put the interval to 1 minute and the number of entries to be retrieved at 50 (I had like 28 entries in my blog but I read that articlepost.php can detect if there is less entries than you enter).

I run articlebot.php manually, got the white screen and after a few minutes my posts started to appear. You can refresh the bots manager page in your admincp and you will see when the next update will be.

After getting my blog entries I configured articlebot to 120 minutes interval and getting posts 1 by 1 again.

I hope it helps.

weaver · #**158** 08-02-2004, 04:13 PM

I keep getting an error saying there isn't a file at any of the links I put in.

Velocd · #**159** 08-03-2004, 06:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snobbymom

I keep getting an error saying there isn't a file at any of the links I put in.

I think those of you who are having issues with the bot not posting should read up on this post:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=145

Make sure your cron script is set accordingly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JumpD

I installed this and it is fantastic. Thanks alot. I did have a problem with some code in the feed I am parsing. As well as keeping bold charecters intact. But I solved it by adding the following code.

I found

PHP Code:


			
$article['description'] = strip_tags(html_entity_decode(trim($article['description'])));

and added above.

PHP Code:


			
$article['description'] = str_replace('&lt;b&gt;', '[b]', $article['description']);

$article['description'] = str_replace('&lt;/b&gt;', '[/b]', $article['description']);

$article['description'] = str_replace('</b>', '[/b]', $article['description']);

$article['description'] = str_replace('<b>', '[b]', $article['description']);

$article['description'] = str_replace('<br />', "\n\r", $article['description']);

$article['description'] = str_replace('&lt;br /&gt;', "\n\r", $article['description']);

And everything was fine. Thanks again for the great hack.

Ah, cool, I'll have to update the hack with a preg_replace version of this.

(although I think there is already vB3 code for it somewhere)

weaver · #**160** 08-03-2004, 07:16 PM

The problem I'm having is that it's not accepting any of the links I'm entering for feeds. It keeps saying there isn't a file there when they are good urls.

Velocd · #**161** 08-04-2004, 07:06 PM

Can you post a sample link?

Also, what version of PHP is installed on your server?

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