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]

Originally Posted by Briboy923

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

for the source you will put in the URL to the RSS news feed.

[the_sisko]

First of all, nice work. I read through the original hack thread and this one and came up with a question.

I'm runnig a german board and tried some rss feeds. most of them don't have a pubDate field. What happens when they don't have this field? Does it work anyway or do I have to create a workaround for it?

Any other german here with good working news feeds?

[P.Jackson]

Now this is tru be lucky to get 3 words

Originally Posted by ryanozawa

.

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!

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by the_sisko

First of all, nice work. I read through the original hack thread and this one and came up with a question.

I'm runnig a german board and tried some rss feeds. most of them don't have a pubDate field. What happens when they don't have this field? Does it work anyway or do I have to create a workaround for it?

Any other german here with good working news feeds?

it should work, it just won't submit anything to the rss_date field in the database. then this means that when it is checking for duplicates it won't find any "old" articles and it will post duplicates if there are any.

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by P.Jackson

Now this is tru be lucky to get 3 words

ya .... that's the problem of most RSS news feeds, but the purpose of them is not to give the full article, but just to give a tiny description of what the article is about. they want you to goto their site to read the whole article. although some places put the whole news in the RSS feed. just gotta find those places or deal with the tiny TINY descriptions. i wish they would give a little bit longer description, not just a sentance, maybe more like a paragraph.

[MaxScript]

ok , i have installed it and i still have no feeds ?

[Natch]

My request with this would be a mod to have each NewsFeed in one thread, not a new thread for each feed ...

Any ideas Slapyo ?

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by MaxScript

ok , i have installed it and i still have no feeds ?

do you get any kind of error messages at all? is everything correct?

you set up a bot?
you set up scheduled task?
you installed everything properly?

what is the link to the rss feed you are using.

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by Natch

My request with this would be a mod to have each NewsFeed in one thread, not a new thread for each feed ...

Any ideas Slapyo ?

could be done ... would have to look into it. would probably just be a shift in the code and change a couple things. the title would be something like "news posted at {insert time}" then inside would have the news description and link for every news article. lemme look into it some.

[MaxScript]

Originally Posted by Slapyo

do you get any kind of error messages at all? is everything correct?

you set up a bot?
you set up scheduled task?
you installed everything properly?

what is the link to the rss feed you are using.

yup yup

un-install it went back to the first one .... but that one only on forum feeds out of 4

www.batalk.com

[Slapyo]

hm, my script is derived from the original script. it should work if you followed the install instructions.

i take it you are using a Yahoo!News feed. those work fine for me, i am using the sports feed for my site.

make sure you follow the instructions step by step in the setup. i know you probably did. but not knowing what is going on, that is all i can tell you right now.

[MaxScript]

if you like to go in as admin , Pm me

[krohnathlonman]

I'm having a bunch of dumplicate post problems....

[Slapyo]

does your news feed have a pubDate field. if it doesn't have a date field, or if it is named something other than pubDate you will get duplicate posts.

[Leah]

Is it possible to get this to work with rdf also?