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.

[gmarik]

Great - love RSS!

[ranger2kxlt]

Ford blogs? are they out there?

[Velocd]

Google is your best bet to find blogs. There are thousands out there, search around. use keywords like Movabletype, Los Angeles Blogs, Xanga.com, Blogger, etc. If you want more traditional sources, find large news sites, like BBC, that provide RSS files.

It doesn't seem to like table prefixes.

Appears to be line 377 in articlebot_admin.php

Hm, thought I got them all. Will make the change.

Velocd, how about the option to prefix the titles with something we can use to identify the different feeds. Like a feed from Blues could be [Blues] Morning Q&A's and ShackNews could show as [Shack] Game Reviews.

Ah, although I don't believe the RSS parser I use (MagpieRSS) grabs that information.

I'll take a second look though.

The cron also shows up in the whois online as the base path.

Given the cron has the same IP as your server, you could probably do a comparison in online.php with $_SERVER["SERVER_ADDR"] and exclude that entry. I'll look into this also. Expect an update probably Sunday.

[romeshomey]

Im having a problem and not sure what it is.

Warning: chdir(): No such file or directory (errno 2) in /home/drewster/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 42

Warning: main(./global.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/drewster/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 43

Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required './global.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/drewster/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 43

Im really not sure what to put in the articlebot.php which Im sure is why Im having that error when I try to execute it.

chdir('home/drewster/public_html/forums');
require_once './global.php';

include_once './articlebot/rss_fetch.inc';

Anyone see what I might have wrong?

[romeshomey]

I tried this

chdir('/home/drewster/public_html/forums/');
require_once 'home/drewster/public_html/forums/global.php';

include_once 'home/drewster/public_html/forums/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc';

Still getting an error, but not sure what I have wrong...

Warning: main(home/drewster/public_html/forums/global.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/drewster/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 43

Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required 'home/drewster/public_html/forums/global.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/drewster/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 43

[romeshomey]

Ok, no errors now, but also don't see anything when the php runs... Is that normal?

http://www.insidersportszone.com/for...articlebot.php

[romeshomey]

Hmm, something isnt right. Its either not reading the feed I have in there or isnt working altogether. Not sure which.

I have this feed running on other sites, so should work here as well, but isnt.

http://xml.newsisfree.com/4/43/4306f...6d8c1dd74c.xml

[romeshomey]

Ok, well its working as far as showing a feed on the forums.

Problem now is, it looks like this..

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Venezuela was eliminated from the Copa America after tying Bolivia 1-1 Monday. <br clear=all>

http://www.newsisfree.com/click/i,43984701,1471,rss/

How do I get it to not show the <br clear=all> ??

[romeshomey]

Is there a way to get it to read the html in the RSS feeds?

I have HTML enabled in the forums, but when my Bot posts the HTML in the feeds stil show as <b> and </b> etc...

Is there a way to enable it to read the HTML so the bold is bold and etc?

[gmtalk]

Originally Posted by ranger2kxlt

Ford blogs? are they out there?

We will be having news feeds from two of our sites by the end of this month.

I have not seen any others as of yet that are Ford Specific. I have not been looking too hard, but i have had a look.