NNTP Gateway (Usenet/Newsgroups)

This hack provides a gateway to any NNTP newsgroup such as those from Usenet and other newsgroup servers. Selected newsgroups are imported from your news server and post on the forum are sent out to the newsgroup. This hack was greatly inspired by fastforward's usenet gateway hack. This one is a complete rewrite of that hack written in PHP and works with vB 2.2.2.

Installation:
Installation is pretty simple. No modifications to the vB php files are needed and it simply consists of dropping in the files to your forums directory, running the SQL modifications, and modifying the newsgroup settings for your desired newsgroups. For the complete installation details, read the readme.txt file.

Here are some of the features:

• Real cool vbcode to text conversion!
• All posts are inserted, even if parent thread cannot be found for replies
• Guests posts also get sent to the newsgroup.
• Importing of attachments from the newsgroup
• Poll info sent to newsgroup
• Attachment link sent to newsgroup
• Supports unlimited newsgroups and servers.
• email notification of new replies, just like regular forum posts
• Can import HTML messages and convert to limited vb code.

For control panel integration, please check out GameCrash's Graphical Interface addition.

What's not in it that was in fastforward's usenet gateway hack:

• No control panel integration at the moment. (Available separately)
• Does not support separate footers
• Does not allow custom email address to be used via the users option
• No spam control or string replacement support.
• No purging or autoexpire.

There is still lots that I'd like to add to it, but this is competely functional for basic newsgroup gateway support. It is most likely not free of bugs. If you have questions, suggestions or annoyances, please post in this thread.

vb3 support
lierduh modified this to provide support for the beta versions of vb3. When the release candidates of vb3 come out, I plan to add support for vb3 and add other features to this hack. If you have suggestions for new features, let me know.

E-mail gateway support
New in this version, you can now gateway with an email list. This will fetch emails from a POP email account and send via php's mail function to the mailing list's email address. To set up the list, in the newsgroup field, enter in the email address to send outgoing posts to. In the server field, enter in the pop3 server, and in the username and password fields enter in, you guessed it, the username and password to your pop account. Note: the email gateway capabilities has not been fully tested, so it might not work with your POP server. Also, it does not work in combo with a news<->forum gateway in the same forum (you can use either kind though in differnet forums within your forums).

[lierduh]

The two sections were copied from the file I downloaded from page 44. So I know the new file contains the fix.

You apparently are using the older one, because you have to manually alter the code. There are two sections need to be changed.

When I said Proxy server, I was wondering if you were getting the old file instead of the new gateway_RC2.zip file. Your ISP could have a transparent proxy.

====
Edit, I just checked your site. Apparently the link for a new thread is working, but not the thread with inserted post. Because you changed the code around line 36?, but not the line 27?. :-)

[allan grossman]

Weirdness.

The reason I didn't change the code in 27? is that the code was identical to what you posted. I changed it anyway just now for grins, but if new threads are working (and it seems they are) then I can just wait for the problem to go away all by itself

Thanks, lierduh!

[allan grossman]

Seems to be working just fine, lierduh - thank you very much.

One more thing I could use if you're still into developing this - can we get the gateway to honor an 'X-No-Archive: Yes' header?

thanks - I think after this I'll probably leave you alone for awhile.

cheers -

allan

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by allan grossman

One more thing I could use if you're still into developing this - can we get the gateway to honor an 'X-No-Archive: Yes' header?

Allan,

Around line 748, find the code:
$response = $news->post(snip......)\r\nX-Originating-IP: $newthread[ipaddress]$ref");

change the ending to:

$response = $news->post(snip......)\r\nX-Originating-IP: $newthread[ipaddress]\r\nX-No-Archive: Yes$ref");

Edit: read your post again. You may be after something different. Do you want the forums to delete these posts after a while? hence does not archive them?

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by lierduh

Allan,

Around line 748, find the code:
$response = $news->post(snip......)\r\nX-Originating-IP: $newthread[ipaddress]$ref");

change the ending to:

$response = $news->post(snip......)\r\nX-Originating-IP: $newthread[ipaddress]\r\nX-No-Archive: Yes$ref");

Edit: read your post again. You may be after something different. Do you want the forums to delete these posts after a while? hence does not archive them?

I want the forum to not pick them up at all, lierduh. Is it possible?

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by allan grossman

I want the forum to not pick them up at all, lierduh. Is it possible?

To clarify a little - Google (and before them, Dejanews) won't grab posts where 'X-No-Archive: Yes' is in the header. I need for posts with this header to not make it into my forums.

thanks - you've been swell on this.

[lierduh]

Around line 153, find this line:

$thisheader=getHeaders(s..................

Add the following lines after that line:

PHP Code:

if (isset($thisheader['X-No-Archive'])) {
     if ($thisheader['X-No-Archive'] == 'Yes') {
          continue;
     }
} 


I have not tested that. So back up your old file.

[allan grossman]

edit:

Didn't work, sorry

Would it be easier to parse the whole post (including header) for

X-No-Archive:<space>Yes

and just bail out of the whole import routine if the string exists? That'd get the damn thing, I'll bet

[lierduh]

Try
if ( trim($thisheader['X-No-Archive']) == 'Yes') {
or

if ( stristr($thisheader['X-No-Archive'], 'yes') {

[allan grossman]

Actually, the first one appears to be almost working now - but if someone with X-No-Archive set replies to a post made through the gateway the post is getting through.

If you compare alt.guitar.bass to my gateway of the newsgroup at http://ebassist.com - there's a poster named "Lynrd" who has X-No-Archive set.

If you look at the past couple hundred posts in the NG I haven't pulled one of his posts - but he just replied to a thread I started and the gateway pulled it in.

The thread I started was called "The final solution - or, 'Hey, Lynrd!'" - and I've got no posts from him in the last two days - although there are four or five in the newsgroup. But - when he replied to the post I made through the gateway the gateway picked it up.

Any thoughts?

I'm gonna try the two other lines you gave me to try.

thanks ;-)