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.

[rajc007]

Originally Posted by poolking

No the userid, i.e. the number of the user.

The userid of the user is 15.

[mrslugger]

I've tried to get this to work, but if I try to add a feed it says "No file located at... whatever the url is"

Am I doing something wrong. I've put the url in exactly as it says and everything.

[Basit]

A Wonderful Hack

However for some reasons I found instructions a bit confusing specially those given in articlebot.php as remarks or may be I failed to figure it out correctly at first place.

Otherwise job weldone.

[yoyoyoyo]

Originally Posted by Basit

A Wonderful Hack

However for some reasons I found instructions a bit confusing specially those given in articlebot.php as remarks or may be I failed to figure it out correctly at first place.

Otherwise job weldone.

I think the cron job thing may a bit confusing to some people, but it can much more easily be set up in the "scheduled tasks" area of the ACP, instead of using the methods described in the read me. The other methods work, but I would think the first plan of action would be to set up a scheduled task via the ACP instead of using phpMyadmin, etc..

and I agree- excellent hack- I am having a lot of fun with it.

[patriotcow]

Hmm I have added this except it doesnt get the news. it just doing do anything

[interfx]

I have seen some examples of this script in use, but the forum post has the title, and a link to read more... (but not the full article)

Is there a way to pull the entire RSS article? and then have the link at the bottom? I did a quick search, but did not see anyone talking about this option...

Can this be done?

InterFX

[yoyoyoyo]

Originally Posted by interfx

I have seen some examples of this script in use, but the forum post has the title, and a link to read more... (but not the full article)

Is there a way to pull the entire RSS article? and then have the link at the bottom? I did a quick search, but did not see anyone talking about this option...

Can this be done?

InterFX

as stated earlier in the thread, that is up to the feed provider. If the feed provides the full story then you can post it, but if it doesn't you can't. You are at the mercy of the feed provider in that sense. If you don't like the feeds, then look around, there are many feeds that do provide more extensive info than "click here to read the story!"

[lebanon]

i download this hack to try it out
all setup fine , added a cron tab , made a notify to my email to see when crontab ran.
here is what i get in email
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.10
Set-Cookie: bblastvisit=1107038700; expires=Sun, 29-Jan-06 22:45:00 GMT; path=/
Set-Cookie: bblastactivity=1107037800; expires=Sun, 29-Jan-06 22:45:00 GMT; path=/
Expires: 0
Cache-Control: private, post-check=0, pre-check=0, max-age=0
Pragma: no-cache
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

My forum is still empty and didnt get any rss , i was tryin two different rss feeds
Wired rss feed and newisfree which was suggested by authos.
Any ideas ? I am having no error messages of any kind , just the forum that i specified to recieve posts is empty !

[peterska2]

A quick question as I've only just got round to installing this and 35 pages of posts is a bit much to read.

Can you set it to post in a particular forum? If you can then can someone enlighten me to how as there ain't nothing about that in the readme.

[peterska2]

OK I'm a dunce I just realised the setting is in the Add RSS screen.