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.

[weaver]

PHP - 4.3.8 (That's what I got from the Admin Panel with VB).

These are a few of the links I've tried... I also tried without the http:// but that didn't work either.

http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/entertainment

http://csmonitor.com/rss/top.rss

http://www.infoworld.com/rss/columnists.xml

[KW802]

Velocd,

Would there be an easy way of adding a conditional to the logic so that if I search for the article and found a particular text value that I could over-ride the forum number and icon number that it's going to use?

Where I'm going with this is the scenario of having multiple RSS feeds but I would want one particular subject matter, no matter from which feed it came from, to always end up in the same forum.

Thoughts?

[Maikeru]

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to fetch http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/music. (HTTP Error: connection failed () in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 136

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 140

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to fetch http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/tech. (HTTP Error: connection failed () in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 136

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 140

This started appearing on the top of my forum a couple days ago... :\

Anything I can do to fix it?

Oh and none of my yahoo feeds will work, so I'm guessing that's why.

[Kwak]

NEW Modified RSS News Feed Hack - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...&highlight=rss


What is the difference of the above hack and this Article Bot hack? I'm new in the RSS feed.

[KW802]

Originally Posted by iKwak

NEW Modified RSS News Feed Hack - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...&highlight=rss

What is the difference of the above hack and this Article Bot hack? I'm new in the RSS feed.

Same end results, just different ways of achieving it.

[weaver]

Well I found out that it is something my server is restricting that is causing it not to work. Thanks for trying to help though.

[Velocd]

Originally Posted by KW802

Velocd,

Would there be an easy way of adding a conditional to the logic so that if I search for the article and found a particular text value that I could over-ride the forum number and icon number that it's going to use?

Where I'm going with this is the scenario of having multiple RSS feeds but I would want one particular subject matter, no matter from which feed it came from, to always end up in the same forum.

Thoughts?

Hmm. :\

My best recommendation is to use specific RSS feeds. e.g. If you have a general forum and a Yahoo! Latest News feed inside it, it's going to get content of all types.. that perhaps you have other specific forums for. Use more specific RSS feeds.

Doing conditionals would be rather rough, and I don't really have the time to experiment with it. :\

Originally Posted by maikeru

This started appearing on the top of my forum a couple days ago... :\

Anything I can do to fix it?

Oh and none of my yahoo feeds will work, so I'm guessing that's why.

Maikeru, what version is your PHP? Maybe you have the same problem as snobbymom, and it's a server-related issue.

[KW802]

Originally Posted by Velocd

Hmm. :\

My best recommendation is to use specific RSS feeds. e.g. If you have a general forum and a Yahoo! Latest News feed inside it, it's going to get content of all types.. that perhaps you have other specific forums for. Use more specific RSS feeds.

Doing conditionals would be rather rough, and I don't really have the time to experiment with it. :\

No problem. I wasn't thinking anything fancy, maybe just some hard-coded conditionals before the inserts that if "X" is found in article[title] or article[description] then to over-ride the value of articlebot[forumid] & articlebot[iconid]. It'd be ugly, but useful.

[fonzerelli_79]

Originally Posted by snobbymom

Well I found out that it is something my server is restricting that is causing it not to work. Thanks for trying to help though.

do you know what the problem is

i cant get this working (tried various feeds) - i run my own server but im not sure of anything that would conflict with the blogs

[fonzerelli_79]

this is strange - i tried a test feed and it kind of worked - several articles pulled through but they all had no content

im still congused as to why the other feeds arent pulling through as there has been updates to them