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.

[memobug]

Originally Posted by Nordinho

I have this weird permission issue...the article bots post are always published...I've made a new usergroup for the bot, with limited permissions and 'always moderate posts', but the articlebot just ignores those settings and keeps on posting...any other ideas on moderating it's posts???

Yes, the robot has carte blanche. It can even post to forums that don't allow posting. Probably the pulldown list for forumids should skip them, but it doesn't. You'd probably need to hack the code and set whatever flag is associated with each post for moderation status.

Regards,

Matt

[memobug]

Originally Posted by iKwak

Does anyone know how to setup the Google News Alert? http://www.google.com/alerts?q=&hl=en

I think you are asking not how to setup the Google News Alert but how to configure the Article Bot to post from a Google News Alert?

I don't think that's possible, yet.

But on a related point I am upset that about 1/2 the articles the Google News Alert turns up seem to require a password subscription. Sometimes not on the first visit from the mail link, but as the post ages a day or two, or perhaps on return visits.

Have you seen this? http://www.bugmenot.com (a system that provides free passwords for various news and subscription services)

Regards,

Matt

[alzibub]

Great hack!

Installed and working a treat, thanks

[Kwak]

Is that true?
I receive the google e-mails about the topic that I like and wanted to setup with the Article Bot hack.

I thought some other member in this thread (few pages earlier) mention that it does work. I should look back and post.

[Kwak]

Originally Posted by buro9

Absolutely.

But you need to have something receive the text email version of the alert and convert it to RSS for you.

There are free email2rss gateways out there, or you can work on your own

This is precisely what I have in place use articlebot for... I have signed up to many music email news lists on sites that don't have RSS feeds. But I receive the emails, publish them as an RSS feed, and then consume them with the articlebot and thus they appear in as threads on my forum.

If you need a hand with the choices available for email2rss gateways, just ask.

Here it is!
buro9, please help me on setting up Google News Alert to work together with the Article Bot. Thank you.

[buro9]

Originally Posted by iKwak

Here it is!
buro9, please help me on setting up Google News Alert to work together with the Article Bot. Thank you.

You want to be looking at this:
http://wonko.com/software/mailfeed/

It's what I use with Article Bot to get emails into forums via RSS.

If you don't want to go so far as hacking scripts, then consider mail bucket:
http://www.mailbucket.org/

In both cases you'll need to modify Article Bot slightly to allow any sized RSS description to pass throught (so the email content isn't truncated).

[dethfire]

I can't get this to work, tried it with yahoo and bbc feeds, doesn't seem to get anything, I run the script and the page is blank with the text "ArticleBOT"

[erikxxon]

When i try to Add Article Bot I get this Error message?
What does it mean?

Do i have to create a member on the forum first with this "Bot name"?

ErikXXon
Ill have VB 3.0.3

[permabanned.net]

Originally Posted by manguish

Triead manually running articlebot.php - still a blank screen, so i go into manage article bots to see if its changed and my bots have posted!!

The PHP script just updates the database entries, it is not supposed to display anything itself. It's like a "cron job" and not meant to generate any visible output.

[permabanned.net]

I'm using this as a way to incorporate Web links via My Furl from the RSS feed, see example. It could be cool, because then we could also have discussions about the web links if we want.

Is there any way to stop posts from Articlebot from showing up in New Posts? I had another feed set up, but I ended up deleting it because I didn't like all of the items from that feed showing up under New Posts.

Does vBulletin have a mechanism, or is there a hack available, to exclude forum(s) from the New Posts? I'm using separate forums for each feed, so if there was some way I could exclude a forum from the New Posts, that would work.