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.

[yellowchaser]

Originally Posted by mr.nerve

Hi,

I'm very new to this, but I have managed to get the bots to work, but they seem to be giving me errors as listed below.



This appears at the top of the main forum page after the rssbots update

Other than that message at the top of the forums, they seem to work, but do not post a link in thier thread, or even a description. I will have to do more looking into that, but I am using ESPN and FOX sports for the feeds, and not sure how much info they provide.

But, any assistance you could offer on the above errors would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you.
NeRVe

I have the same problem here too.

[yellowchaser]

Fixed the problem, updated to the latest Magpie files at http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/ and it works with no errors now

[subnet_rx]

How do you troubleshoot if your getting no errors (that I've found) but no posts?

[Madmax4321]

How do you troubleshoot if your getting no errors (that I've found) but no posts?

yeah i had same problem too.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

subnet_rx,

You are currently showing up as unlicensed. To be able to download hacks and/or receive support here at vBulletin.org, we ask you to please click here (vB-germany users click here) and enter your email address, to show us that you are licensed.

You will need to use your customer number and password (which will be in the email you got when you paid for your license) to access that page. Please note that your email is case sensitive. The update of your account may take up to one hour.

Thank you.

[Byron]

How do we uninstall this hack in future?

[wtrk]

the default template displays only the posting date and a link to the article. i want to include the actual article text as well in the bots post. how do i do this?

[weallgoboing]

When I try to add an artivlebot I get

Error: There is no user with ID of 0.

Heyulp!

***PAGE 46 GIVES THE ANSWER!***

[NxTek]

I'm grabbing a feed from http://www.pokerdiagram.com/rss.xml which is a Podcast. The Podcast (mp3) is linked through an <enclosure> tag, which Article Bot seems to ignore when posting to the forum. Is this a bug?

[The Avatar]

Okay, maybe this has been answered already in this huge thread, I went through 20 pages and didn't see anything about it, so sorry if it has already been answered.

But.....

How come the scheduled task of the article bot never executes? I can get it to run, by running the bot manually, however I have it scheduled to update every hour and it doesn't. Any idea why?