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

[Natch]

Great work Slapyo - the duplicates seem to be gone

[Slapyo]

whew! good to know. lemme know if they are still there, or if you notice any other problems.

[Intex]

Yep, gone for me too. Thx. Slapyo.

[Deimos]

I've got a problem with it to
Installed it AOK, ran the cron job and it picked up the news from the page I wanted it to...that was 2/3 days ago and it hasn't updated/got anymore news since then
Any ideas why?
I re ran the cron job and it didn't update it either.

[gmtalk]

Is the news feed updated?

Some of my feeds are only updated M-F

[Deimos]

Fixed it, for some reason it didn't like my user id being the reporter, as soon as I set it to a new user I setup, it started posting ok.

I now have a new problem (yay...)
I accidently overwrote my forum index file with the one from the vbadvanced page...no problem, I restored it
But as soon as I load the forums, I get....

Deimos: Fatal error: Call to undefined function: build_new_post() in /home/deimos/public_html/forums/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 103

Anyone know why? I haven't changed any files
If I disable the news bots, it loads ok, but if I enable it, it breaks
Er...

[Slapyo]

ya, like gmtalk said ... sometimes the news feeds are not updated very often, maybe once or twice a week. what is the rss feed you are using. which website is it coming from?

[Slapyo]

hrm trying getting a new copy of /includes/functions_newpost.php and re-editing the files.

[Deimos]

Thanks slap, it was my mistake, I uploaded an old version of the index file which called the rss_update file

Btw, I have a question for you
I've installed or setup an RSS type news ripper, which grabs news from a URL..
It then puts this info into an RDF file
I've tried pointing the RSS news feed to this file, but it doesn't add the contents to the forum
The layout of the RDF file is....

Content-Type: text/html

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rdf:RDF
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns="http://my.netscape.com/rdf/simple/0.9/">

<channel>
<title>ORIGIN - Ultima Online - Main</title>
<link>http://update.uo.com/fyi.html</link>
<description>FYI</description>
</channel>
<item>



&nbsp; <b>Ultima Registration Server Downtime</b>


Jun 25 2004 6:02PM CST (GMT -06:00)&nbsp;


<item>



Beginning at 10:00PDT on Friday, June 25th the Ultima Registration and account management servers may experience approximately 1 hour of downtime for maintenance.



</rdf:RDF>

The script i'm using to grab the news is....

http://www.openconcept.on.ca/guide-html2rdf.phtml

Now, i'm guessing it doesn't like the layout of the RDF file somehow, as it just won't add what's in there to my forum
The RSS does work aok for other news things like yahoo news etc, but not this custom thing.....

Any ideas ?

[Deimos]

By the way, if i'm asking for to much, I apologise

[rsuplido]

Have you all tried adding a feed coming from a VB3 RSS2 feed? It can't extract it. Any workaround?

[rsuplido]

Originally Posted by Deimos

Thanks slap, it was my mistake, I uploaded an old version of the index file which called the rss_update file

Btw, I have a question for you
I've installed or setup an RSS type news ripper, which grabs news from a URL..
It then puts this info into an RDF file
I've tried pointing the RSS news feed to this file, but it doesn't add the contents to the forum
The layout of the RDF file is....



The script i'm using to grab the news is....

http://www.openconcept.on.ca/guide-html2rdf.phtml

Now, i'm guessing it doesn't like the layout of the RDF file somehow, as it just won't add what's in there to my forum
The RSS does work aok for other news things like yahoo news etc, but not this custom thing.....

Any ideas ?

I'm getting the same problem and it seems like the includes\class.RSS.php file, supports only RSS 0.91. Also, if you look at your example, <channel> and </channel> is declared above. Usually <item></item> are in between the <channel></channel> tags. You might want to do some tweaking on the class.RSS.php file and remove the <channel> test.

Regards.

[Deimos]

Remove the channel test? hmm

[Slapyo]

goes like this:

<channel>
	<item>
		<title></title>
		<link></link>
		<pubDate></pubDate>
		<description></description>
	</item>
</channel>

that is the format that it follows, if there are more items, they go between the <channel> tags.

for now, this is just a RSS feed. i haven't had time to look into adding different kinds of feeds like RDF or ATOM. i might if i get some time.

[Deimos]

Thanks Slap, it'd be awesome if you could..