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.

[FirstStepBlake]

Long story short on why, KW802: When I find an article of interest, I post it (quickly via FeedDemon) to my personal weblog. This is the RSS feed pulled by the bot to our internal vBulletin setup... I could log into the forum and post, but this is a quicker way. I only post a few items per day at most, so the volume isn't much.

[roundhost]

Wonderful, im about to install it, thanks a bunch

[roundhost]

Hmm, its all setup fine but the bots arent posting my feeds, i have set them to post every minute and have the cron executing every minute so im going to see if i can fix it and once i have them post once i will know its fixed :S

[roundhost]

ok its not working for me The bots just dont post, i use yahoo feeds and i have the cron set for every minute and i have the articles set for every minute but they just dont post....what can i do?

[roundhost]

Originally Posted by roundhost

ok its not working for me The bots just dont post, i use yahoo feeds and i have the cron set for every minute and i have the articles set for every minute but they just dont post....what can i do?

Still not posting for me...:cry:

[Velocd]

Go to the file articlebot.php in your browser, and see if it gives you any error.

Additionally, what is your PHP version?

[roundhost]

Originally Posted by Velocd

Go to the file articlebot.php in your browser, and see if it gives you any error.

Additionally, what is your PHP version?

PHP Version 4.3.8

articlebot.php returns a blank page...

*sighs*

[roundhost]

Two articles have posted :-o, hmm thats interesting. Maybe its randomly decided to work now...i shall get back to you if i get any more problems, thanks for the help anyways

[FirstStepBlake]

Hey, can you give me an answer on this on way or another? I need the email to go out on a new post. If you can't make it work, please let me know. Thanks!

[Velocd]

You certain you have the cron configured correctly? (something like /usr/local/bin/php /home/myfolder/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php). This is a cron tab, and not the vBulletin task system, eh?

Even so, running articlebot.php manually should get the bots going.

Not that this should matter, but your vBulletin version is?