NEW Modified RSS News Feed Hack

Hack originally posted by: Xyphen - RSS News Feed Hack
Modified by: wolfstream - Modified RSS News Feed Hack

I am posting this up as a new hack because of the major changes made to how the script works. Also, I didn't want people to get confused as to which one to download since there were 3 different versions on the original post.

Xyphen released the original version, then wolfstream modified the script and corrected some errors. After that, I modified wolfstreams version to change how posts were inserted. Now the post count will increase, posts will be able to be searched, and similiar threads will work.

RSS News Feed Hack for vB 3.0.x. As long as vBulletin doesn't change the database structure much, this should be good for the next release also, and those to come.

Allows you to have a live RSS news feed (such as one from Google or CNET) in a forum. The user that posts it will basically be a bot, which *should* only be used for posting the news, but you can even make it for a regular user.

Comments are welcome! Support provided through this thread.

Latest Version:
- 1.26 - for PHP 4.3.0 & above
- 1.26a - for PHP prior to 4.3.0

vBulletin Versions:
- 3.0.0
- 3.0.1

PHP Versions:
- > 4.3.0
- < 4.3.0

Installation Overview:
- Files to edit: (2) /admincp/index.php, /includes/functions_newpost.php
- Files to upload: (4) rss.php, admincp/rss_admin.php, includes/RSS/class.RSS.php, includes/RSS/rss_update.php
- Queries to run: (4) in rss_install.php

History:
Version 1.26 (23 June 2004 - Slapyo, Natch)
- listing of bot's more intuitive (Natch)
- hopefully fixed duplicate problem (Slapyo)
- stripped html tags from title and description (Slapyo)

Version 1.25 (12 May 2004 - Slapyo)
- fix for &quot; showing up
- logs action in scheduled task log if turned on

Version 1.24 (20 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- posts now deleted with delete_thread function
- post counts updated when using delete all news

Version 1.23 (14 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- added ability to delete bots
- cleaned up includes
- fix for PHP versions prior to 4.3.0 calling html_entity_decode()

Version 1.22 (13 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- duplicate posts problem fixed
- fix for problem with ' appearing as \'

Version 1.21 (12 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- bot will not be subscribed to posts now

Version 1.2 (11 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- posts now inserted with build_new_post function

Version 1.1 (28 March 2004 - wolfstream)
- file edits taken down to 1
- cron script included

Version 1.0 (28 January 2004 - Xyphen)
- original release

Common RSS Feeds:
- Yahoo!
- CNET.com
- BBC
- Wired News
- The Register
- Ars Technica
- All Headline News

[Slapyo]

the original one did not increase the post count. but search and similiar threads didn't work either. i don't offer support for either of those. there has been numerous fixes and upgrades to the way things work. i would suggest that you use the modified original version if you are going to use one of them. it is more stable than the original.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=60899 - original
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=139 - modified original

[yeloc]

what would I be doing wrong? The task is not updating on its own. It works fine when I hit the "run now" button. I have it set to run every hour.

[Slapyo]

do you have a busy forum? i found the way that the cron jobs work in vB is that say you have a list of cron jobs 10 long. the page has to be loaded at or after the scheduled time for the cron job. my forum isn't too busy now and i found to get it to run i have to just reload the page a few times and the news will be inserted. mine is set to run at the hour every hour. if it hasn't run, i look in the scheduled tasks to see how many jobs before it haven't run yet. then i refresh the forums that many times.

[yeloc]

Actually no this is a test forum that I setup.

[Slapyo]

then that might be the problem. it's not actually a true cron job which will run on the hour every hour. you have to have the pages being loaded to check for the next cron job time. if it is time, or past time, it will run...next page load checks for the next cron job.

[maresi]

first: great hack :up:
second: I tried to run the cronjob and got this error message...

Warning: main() [function.main]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(../class.RSS.php) is not within the allowed path(s): (/www/*****/*****/) in /www/*****/*****/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 28
 
Warning: main(class.RSS.php) [function.main]: failed to create stream: Operation not permitted in /www/*****/*****/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 28
 
Fatal error: main() [function.main]: Failed opening required 'class.RSS.php' (include_path='.:..') in /www/*****/*****/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 28

thx for help

maresi

[ryanozawa]

I'm thrilled to have found this hack! I grabbed the latest live linked version as of yesterday (I'm running PHP 4.3.5), and followed the installation instructions. I did create a bot user, and a special forum for it to play in. I can get to the RSS administration panel, added a bot... but then nothing.

Question: When you run the ./rss.php task from the Scheduled Task manager, is there any confirmation message at all? Whenever I click it, it just says Update RSS... and nothing else. No error, but no "Done" either. It doesn't show up in the scheduled task log, either, which makes me doubt it's running.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by maresi

first: great hack :up:
second: I tried to run the cronjob and got this error message...

Warning: main() [function.main]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(../class.RSS.php) is not within the allowed path(s): (/www/*****/*****/) in /www/*****/*****/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 28
 
Warning: main(class.RSS.php) [function.main]: failed to create stream: Operation not permitted in /www/*****/*****/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 28
 
Fatal error: main() [function.main]: Failed opening required 'class.RSS.php' (include_path='.:..') in /www/*****/*****/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 28

thx for help

maresi

sounds like you have a problem with open_basedir. are the files in the right folders? might want to check your php.ini file or do a phpinfo() and see if open_basedir has any restrictions in place.

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by ryanozawa

I'm thrilled to have found this hack! I grabbed the latest live linked version as of yesterday (I'm running PHP 4.3.5), and followed the installation instructions. I did create a bot user, and a special forum for it to play in. I can get to the RSS administration panel, added a bot... but then nothing.

Question: When you run the ./rss.php task from the Scheduled Task manager, is there any confirmation message at all? Whenever I click it, it just says Update RSS... and nothing else. No error, but no "Done" either. It doesn't show up in the scheduled task log, either, which makes me doubt it's running.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

nothing is posted to the log, even if it is turned on ... i plan on adding this feature in. if you see update rss then it ran without any major errors heh, thats the best i can tell you. i haven't even touched that part of the script yet.

what is the rss news feed you are trying to use, can u post the link to it.

[ryanozawa]

Thanks for the quick reply! Here's my intended feed:

http://www.topix.net/rss/state/hi/

Ryan

[ethics]

Can anyone put together a list of the RSS feeds that DO work with this? Slashdot, for example, doesn't.

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by ryanozawa

Thanks for the quick reply! Here's my intended feed:

http://www.topix.net/rss/state/hi/

Ryan

that is an RDF feed. won't work, only RSS feeds.

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by ethics

Can anyone put together a list of the RSS feeds that DO work with this? Slashdot, for example, doesn't.

my inital post has a list of them. if any don't work let me know so i can remove.

Common RSS Feeds:
- Yahoo!
- CNET.com
- BBC
- Wired News
- The Register
- Ars Technica

[Briboy923]

When I add a new bot, do I just say "Yahoo!" for source, do i put in yahoo.com/rss ??? or what

[ryanozawa]

that is an RDF feed. won't work, only RSS feeds.

That would explain it! Fortunately, I found the feeds put out by AllHeadlineNews.com do work, and with regional news feeds, that's all I need. Now to read up on how to tweak the bot's posts... here.

For those interested (and if you'll pardon the self-link), here's my newsbot's playground. I too tweaked the post format (rather than "View the entire article," I just made the headline a link). I sure wish my RSS source would pass a little more meat in the item description, though!

Finally, this autoprune hack makes a great partner with the RSS News Feed hack. If your bot is posting dozens of threads a day, this can make sure you don't suddenly find yourself with 5,000 threads in your bot's forum.