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.

[Megareus Rex]

Whenever I try to add a RSS feed to an article bot, I get this error:

Error: There is no file located at http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/...Technology.xml

This happens with any and all RSS feeds from any site. What could the problem be?

[croft]

ok lol i must be stupid or something cause every time i try to add a news feed to a bot i get this error.

Error: There is no icon of ID 1.

[Megareus Rex]

That means that you have no Post Icon with an ID of 1. Go to Post Icons, and select which Icon you want all posts by the bot to make, and then check out its ID number, and put that in the field.

But, I still need MY question answered =/

[roundhost]

my article bots havent posted since the first time , i set the cron perfectly and i also tried manually without results, ver 3.0.3

[Maikeru]

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to fetch http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/music. (HTTP Error: connection failed () in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 136

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 140

Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to fetch http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/tech. (HTTP Error: connection failed () in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 136

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/maikeru/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 140

Would this stop if I used something for my feeds other than yahoo?

[Megareus Rex]

Would someone please answer my question?

[sully02]

I appear to be having the following problems. It worked just fine the first time through, but now, here are the results:

Warning: Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (junk after document element at line 233, column 16) in /home/sportsd/public_html/forums/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/sportsd/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/sportsd/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141

This error repeats several times throughout (Likely once for each rss source I have). I've attached my articlebot.php file, if it'll help.

[Coyote75]

I know someone else had this problem but didnt see what the solution was

Warning: chdir(): No such file or directory (errno 2) in /home/hardcore/public_html/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 42

Warning: main(./global.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/hardcore/public_html/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 43

Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required './global.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/hardcore/public_html/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 43

[Wential]

Installed and very impressed!

[Geographic2]

When I run my articlebot it made posts with no title and no description, only the link would be within the post...

I tracked it down to determin the problem and the entire pregreplace section doesn't seem to be working right with me... perhaps it's my regular expressions retardedness or perhaps it's something else...


When I comment out this section and the corresponding one for the title it works fine and posts titles and descriptions... Otherwise it turns the article[title] and article[description] strings into empty strings....

PHP Code:

/*                if ($articlebot['global_regex_desc_search'] || $articlebot['regex_desc_search'])
                {
                    if ($articlebot['regex_desc_search'])
                    {
                        $articlebot['global_regex_desc_search']   = $articlebot['regex_desc_search'];
                        $articlebot['global_regex_desc_replace']  = $articlebot['regex_desc_replace'];
                    }

                    $article['description'] = @preg_replace(
                        "$articlebot[global_regex_desc_search]",
                        "$articlebot[global_regex_desc_replace]",
                        $article['description']
                    );
                }
*/ 


I've also tried leaving the reg ex's blank as well as using search: * and replace $1


Could anyone give me some ideas?
Could you also tell me why we call the preg_replace function with:
@preg_replace(...)?

Also, very nice hack. An idea for future implementation would be to search the RSS feeds for keywords... each feed having it's own set of keywords or a global keyword much like you have the pregreplace. so if you were interested in news about pumpkins, or video games, or bottlecaps you could then only post news about bottlecaps, videogames or pumpkins... I may do myself but I figured you might like the idea.

Alternatly we could all create an RSS feed from our forums with entries being threads that match our keywords, links in the posts would be displayed with our keyword linked, an XML feed with participating sites could be hosted somewhere and we could all deploy some nice keyword linking out across the net...

Thanks.