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.

[Maikeru]

Originally Posted by Megareus Rex

*sigh*

Why is it support STILL isnt here?

maybe Velocd is busy. his life isn't to watch this place all the time. i know he has a life outside vbulletin.org.

[GlitterKill]

I have everything setup except the crontab until I get things running right. I created a NewsBot user to posts the articles and everything shoudl e setup right. When I go to execute the articlebot.php file manually i get a white screen and no errors (which I figure is a good thing). But no headlines are posted. The first one I setup is Slashdot's RSS feed located at http://slashdot.org/index.rss

Any tips on where to look to figure out why this isn't working?

[GlitterKill]

I am now able to get the Slashdot feed to work by turning off the similar threads option and by turning off the option to ignore posts without a description.

I also have a feed setup for Bluesnews and The Inquirer. Both of these two are setup the same as the Slashdot feed but articles from them are not posting. I am using the same user to post all three and I assume that part is ok.

Any ideas?

[roundhost]

Ok, im going to install this all over again, i wasnt very happy last time as it went slightly wrong, lets hope this time the results are better

[roundhost]

/me wonders why he even bothered try to install it again, he realises he has wasted his time and wonders if there is still a way to fix the mod so it will asctually post news!

[johnnyb]

Than you need to follow the instructions percisely, and read on modifications that fix the bugs.

[johnnyb]

What I'd really like to see happen with this is two things.

a) The news posts don't count towards user post total. Although the forum properties are set to it, it still posts towards the total amount.

b) Automatically prune the news after X amount of posts.

Although I realize no one is innovating on this script, I hope there is a chance.

[Milorad]

vbulletin should have an auto-pruning option on each forum, like phpbb does. That would solve your problem if your RSS forums were distinct from your regular forums.

You should perhaps look at this: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=67049

I don't really care too much about the post count thing, but I agree that it would be proper for it not to count.

[Holidazed]

I installed this hack and setup my cron and all that. I am getting no errors, but no articles are being posted. I setup my BOT and put its ID in the proper field. It is active. I then setup my feed and pointed it to that BOT and pointed it to the forum I want it in.

My feed is http://www.gov.ab.ca/acn/RSS_FEEDS/RSS_ALL_News.xml

I also edited my articlebot.php file with the proper path.

What is wrong?

[johnnyb]

Run the articlebot.php manually, than if something does show up it's your crontab input. If not, try a different RSS feed, make sure the userID is right, etc. Just double check everything.