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.

[Dannyboy1]

Okay, I am PISSED

The idea of this mod is really great and I really would love to use it but whatever I did I couldn;t make it run. I can assure you all that everything, I mean installation etc, has been done the way it has to be done. The bot is still not making any posts though. How come?
I went trough the entire thread and still there's no solution to similiar posts as mine.

Any ideas?

P.S. For reasons I cannot upgrade to 3.5.x At the moment I use 3.0.8

[XrayHead]

Originally Posted by Dannyboy1

Okay, I am PISSED

The idea of this mod is really great and I really would love to use it but whatever I did I couldn;t make it run. I can assure you all that everything, I mean installation etc, has been done the way it has to be done. The bot is still not making any posts though. How come?
I went trough the entire thread and still there's no solution to similiar posts as mine.

Any ideas?

P.S. For reasons I cannot upgrade to 3.5.x At the moment I use 3.0.8

Mate post a screen cap of you bot setup and the probs you are having!!

Xray..

[bada_bing]

Is there any plans to port this over for 3.5.3 as a product or plugin? would like to run this on my site

[5starAffiliates]

Any answer for my problem with it posting dup and triplicate posts?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=798

Again I would pay someone to set this up right. Please help.

Thanks, Linda

[MagikMuzik]

Originally Posted by ranger2kxlt

Ok stupid question, where do you get RSS feeds from? I mean what site will this info be pulled from? I run a F0RD website, where would i find info on stuff like that?

*sorry disregard opened the zip and you have lots of feeds for me :-D

Give this link a try: http://media.ford.com/newsroom/newsroom_rss.cfm

Have fun

[bada_bing]

Looks like this hack is never going to be updated as I have received no reply... Too bad

[DS MrSinister]

this has been ported for some time now.

here is a link to it


https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=100269

[MikeBlah]

i really like the idea of this bot, just can't quite get it working...

when i call up the page at....com/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php

i get this:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: array_change_key_case() in /var/www/html/forums/articlebot/rss_parse.inc on line 203

any suggestions?

[ffevo]

So does this mean, I can link it to post my news from my main page?

[dwbro1]

Originally Posted by DS MrSinister

this has been ported for some time now.

here is a link to it


https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=100269

Hmm I get permission denied when trying to follow this link.