RSS News Feed Hack

My friend made this hack, he owns http://www.liquidpro.net. Check him out.
You may contact him at liquidpro@neo.rr.com. Or you can IM him on AIM at LiquidPro10.

An example is shown at http://www.xtreme-forumz.net. Go to the Techno forum under the General category. Then the CNET News sub-forum.

RSS News Feed Hack for vB 3.0.0. 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!

Instructons:
Note: DON'T FORGET TO MAKE A BACKUP OF EACH FILE BEFORE YOU MODIFY IT!

Copy the files to your web server... keep the same directory structure as in the zip file.
Run the rss_install.php file to setup the RSS script.
If you're upgrading run the rss_upgrade.php file to setup the RSS script. Don't forget to remove all previous modifications (you can find them by searching for "LiquidPro")

#### open the /index.php script ####
Find this:

PHP Code:

require_once('./includes/functions_forumlist.php'); 


Add below it:

PHP Code:

require_once('./includes/RSS/rss_update.php'); 


#### open the /forumdisplay.php script ####
Find this:

PHP Code:

require_once('./includes/functions_forumdisplay.php'); 


Add below it:

PHP Code:

require_once('./includes/RSS/rss_update.php'); 


#### open the /admincp/index.php script ####

Find this:

PHP Code:

construct_nav_group("$vbphrase[styles] &amp; $vbphrase[templates]", '<hr />'); 


Add below it:

PHP Code:

// Manage Hacks
// by: Andrew Wickham
// LiquidPro Inc.
//
construct_nav_option('RSS News Feed', 'rss_admin.php', '<br />');
construct_nav_group('Hacks');
//
// End Manage Hacks 


You're done, thanks for installing the hack.

Hack by: Andrew Wickham (http://www.liquidpro.net)
Hack for: Xtreme-Forumz (http://www.xtreme-forumz.net)

[Sooner95]

this is a good idea... nice one. Hope this canbe made to work on the Gold version when its released...

[raxafarian]

Originally Posted by raxafarian

the problem is the apostrophe in the headline it was trying to grab....

turning magicquotes on took care of this problem. I got it to work with one feed, but most of what I can use are not ver.91. A few feeds seem to include image tags which makes them not function. Here is one of those:
http://p.moreover.com/cgi-local/page?feed=30770&o=rss

[Xyphen]

Yea that'd fix it, because on my server it's not having a problem with apostrophe's in the titles. That example you posted isn't a very good news feed. Under the description it has the date and such, where my script is made to have the description as a short version of the article. I'd steer away from using that one, not to mention it doesn't have a pubdate field, so that'd cause some errors with the program.

I designed it with CNET News in mind.

[Pady]

an excellent looking hack m8 - would it be possible to expand it so that you can have different feeds posting in different forums?

[Xyphen]

Hm, be a little more complicated and I'd have to convert it over to SQL based instead of file-based configuration. However, it could be done... I will look at that for the next version I put out (which will probably be here in the next couple weeks). Thanks for the input.

[mitchjaz]

Looks great. I am anxious for it to ready for RC3

[LLFan]

Got it working just fine, great hack.

1 question though, as posts have been made by the bot they are not upping the forum post count. I setup a new forum just for the rss feed but people will never be able to see when new news arrives unless they physically go into the forum. Is there a fix?

[Xyphen]

Well, I could, but it'd slow down your load time for the main page. You'd have to be willing to sacrifice that.

[raxafarian]

by the way... I got that feed working. I had to delete the two RSS entries in the thread table, then reinstall them.

Seems to be working well

thanks

[LLFan]

Originally Posted by Xyphen

Well, I could, but it'd slow down your load time for the main page. You'd have to be willing to sacrifice that.

Please explain...how would this slow down the load time?