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]

my initial post for this hack has a list of some common RSS feeds, it is at the very bottom of the post just above the attachments.

[Erwin]

Is there any way to avoid the bot posting the same headlines again and again?

[Slapyo]

is there a pubDate field in the feed you are pulling?

[Intex]

Slapyo - very nice hack. I've installed it and it works fine.

The only problem I can see is when the RSS feeds are pulled in, e.g. from The Register, the oldest posts are appearing that the top. I guess you can't do anything about that and it's down to the people that create the XML?

/me clicks install.

[Slapyo]

ya, its some weird thing with how the RSS script processes the feed. i've noticed that as well.

[Milez]

I would give blood for an rss feed that had more than a simple 1 line description with a link. I want to keep users on my forum. I would gladly pay for this service.

[Slapyo]

<a href="http://www.syndic8.com" target="_blank">http://www.syndic8.com</a>

might find something there.

[maestrosdelweb]

Hi. The w3c accepted ATOM feed format as the standard (blooger is also promoting them).

Any chance of an ATOM version of this script for the future?

[Slapyo]

as of right now i don't plan on doing any more to the script till i finish up school. have a few weeks left till i graduate then i will have some time. but there were a couple things i was thinking about adding in. one was adding in the ability to use RDF feeds, so this would go along with that, i could make an option for what kind of feed it is. will keep this in mind.

[maestrosdelweb]

Great. I'll check the code to see if I can help. Best regards and good luck with school.

[Intex]

I've had this running for a couple of weeks now and everything works well. I think it could be further improved by:

• Stripping the HTML tags off some the thread titles before posting. This doesn't particularly look very good. Maybe there's a hack that will parse HTML on thread names?
  
• The RSS feeds are simply pulled from the respective website. However, every newsfeed will have the latest information at the top of the XML, which is normal bahaviour. However in a forum environment, this is undesirable because the top most item gets posted into the forum first and later threads get posted above as they're newer. The script would need to revserve this to get the desired effect, i.e. newest threads at the top of the forum.
  
• Having an option to not count posts from the bot that's being used to post. Maybe there's a hack for this too?

[Slapyo]

in rss_update.php:

FIND:

PHP Code:

$rss_title = html_entity_decode($rss_title, ENT_NOQUOTES);
$rss_description = html_entity_decode($rss_description, ENT_NOQUOTES); 


ADD, ABOVE:

PHP Code:

$rss_title = strip_tags($rss_title);
$rss_description = strip_tags($rss_description); 


that should fix HTML tags showing up in both the title and in the descritpion. i know about the way the feed is pulled, parsed, and posted. i will have to look into a work around so that it gets posted the right way and parses the RSS from the bottom up.

the function used to insert posts was one that vB already had built it. this uses the exact same function that vB does to insert posts. that also includes upping he post count and stuff like that. removing the post count would take some time. a quick fix for that is to make that forum not have post counts increase. but then any normal user that replies to a post won't get a post.

[Intex]

Slapyo - thx for the info. I'll make adjustments to the code to get rid of the HTML stuff. I've already disabled posts for the forum where RSS feeds are put in.

Good job - thx .

[The Realist]

Installed and working 100%.

Nice hack.

[The Realist]

Can someone or even the developer of this hack take a look at my request here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=65767

It will come in handy for anyone using this hack.