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

[martinh4]

Installed and it's working great.

[venomx]

Ok I run VB3.0.3 and tried Article Bot and it works fine except on the forum home it doesnt updat the Last Post field. Does this hack have the same problem?

[Slapyo]

it might be how article bot inserts the post. article bot may insert the post manually...but this bot will use vB's function to make a new post. however i would still go with article bot because it offers many more features than this one. make the suggestion to the article bot dev.

[Blam Forumz]

My scheduled task is called rss.php it has everything that it should have,the filename is ./rss.php

and when i run it, all i get is a message saying:

rss.php

and no post in the forum i setup the bots to post in... help, i use 3.0.2 and i dotn know how to check my php version

[DanGarion]

If I try to run the scheduled task I all I get is the name of my Scheduled task and nothing that says "Done".

If I try to bring up the rss.php file it's just a blank page.

I don't see any errors generated anywhere.

http://uo.stratics.com/php-bin/rss/raw.php is the feed.

[Slapyo]

dan, that is a rdf feed not a rss feed. try article bot, it is located in the integration forum. it does rdf i think.

[blueuniverse]

Is there any way, to make it accept 287 character, RSS addresses in the source box. Currently it is limiting me to 148. Don't ask about the long feed, it is one of those super configurable ones.

How would I do this?

[Slapyo]

i'm not sure. i only made changes to the script and still don't know all the ins and outs about it. i do know that article bot is alot more advanced in what it does as compared to this bot.

[blueuniverse]

Originally Posted by blueuniverse

Is there any way, to make it accept 287 character, RSS addresses in the source box. Currently it is limiting me to 148. Don't ask about the long feed, it is one of those super configurable ones.

How would I do this?

Ignore this now, I sorted it by editing the field in phpMyAdmin

[Slapyo]

oh ok cool ... glad you got it working the way you want.

[scoobycray]

Iv'e installed but do not get anything happening....

If I run the scheduled task manually its just says rss.php and nohing else.

running php 4.3.4 and setup the forum ID and user all OK trying to use RSS Feed URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline...rld/rss091.xml

Any ideas? Would love to get this running....

[scoobycray]

DOn't worry fixed it - for anyone else just check you are putting the user ID NUMBER and not the Users name when you add a new bot

[scoobycray]

I had the same issue with BBC where it grabs the first set of headlines when you first run it but will bot update, no idea why though.

[ToddW]

MoreOver Feeds aren't working for me... Any idea why?

TheRegister feed wroked then I moved to a new sub-forum and they didn't update in here when I ran the cron..?

[58sniper]

One minor suggestion....

adv_portal_news_archivebits ends up spitting out a line like this:

<b><a href="http://dev.defensivetactics.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51" title="<br /><br />View the Entire Article<br />">Development:  AL QAEDA SEEN PLANNING FOR 'SPECTACULAR ATTACK'</a></b>

I'm concerned about the breaks in the title parameter. That's causing some validation problems.

In rss_update.php, I found this:

PHP Code:

$rss_description .= "{br}{br}[url=" . $rss_allItems[$j][LINK] . "]View the Entire Article[/url]{br}"; 


If I pull out the three breaks, is that going to cause problems elsewhere?