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.

[Erwin]

PICNIC, probelm in chair, not in computer.

I LIKE it. Very cool acronym.

[Natch]

Originally Posted by Erwin

I LIKE it. Very cool acronym.

It's a little nicer than referring to the ID 10 T errors

[Natch]

Back on topic

I've taken a look at this issue referred to by venomx and it's related to the instantaneous posting of multiple articles...

So: I'm intending on modifying the hack to cause the ArticleBot's to post with at least a 1 second separation between the items so there are no posts with identical timestamps.

[Natch]

OK - this will not work on Windows server prior to PHP5...

In articlebot/articlebot.php, Find:

PHP Code:

                if (++$count >= $articlebot['fetchlimit'])
                    break;
            }

            $nextpost = TIMENOW + ($articlebot['postinterval'] * 60); 


Insert ABOVE:

PHP Code:

                usleep(500); // sleep for 500 u-seconds to provide unique post time - NOT WORK ON WINDOWS PRIOR TO PHP5 


[mobilephonegame]

gr8 bit of coding, works really well :-) good job.!

Just a quick question...

I have everything set up fine on vb 3.03, and it pulls news from various feeds, but im now wanting to retreive via rss2, but looking at the rss2 url the varible "description" has been replaced with <content:encoded>

when i set the feed to rss2 it doesnt pull the short description, as the description tag has changed to <content:encoded> on the rss2 page and therefore on the posts, it then only adds the title & the link to the article.

is there any way to amend or add to the coding, so that i pulls <content:encoded> instead of, or aswell as <description> .? this way i can have the full post showing on my site when i select rss2 feeds, and not a short line of text etc....can this be done via the template.? or does it have to be code added to articlebot.php etc>?

any assist here would be gr8 folks.

Regards
Nick

[mobilephonegame]

anyone got a clue.? or has support ended for this hack.?

its supposed to be complient with RSS 2 but doesnt seem to be :surprised:

[venomx]

Nope the usleep(500); didnt work for me..

[RetroDreams]

Originally Posted by RetroDreams

Yep, my members officially started complaining today and thus, PaperBoy (the Articlebot) became no more.

I would like to re-enabled this, but until features like above are added, I just can't do it.

Great, great hack though.

Anyone found a way to keep Articlebot posts from spamming recent threads, and being returned when searching the forums via "New Posts"?

I'd love to re-enable this.

I have messed-up somewhere along the line as it is not working.

My webhost is running windows server and task scheduler is used instead of cron. So I have placed an include once in my index.php file and in articlebot.php commented out:

chdir('/path/to/forums/');
  require_once './global.php';

I then created an Article Bot user who should search for the rss feed:
http://news.yahoo.com/rss/

And set the post interval to 1 min and waited. So far nothing has been posted.

In my article bot manager the next feed is due at 7:01 am (despite having set the interval to 1 mins) and although I installed it last night, and 7:01 am has been and gone still there are no posts.

I must have missed something in "Routinizing your article bots" but have checked and re-checked.

Any thoughts?

[mobilephonegame]

Originally Posted by Ceroc

I have messed-up somewhere along the line as it is not working.

My webhost is running windows server and task scheduler is used instead of cron. So I have placed an include once in my index.php file and in articlebot.php commented out:

chdir('/path/to/forums/');
  require_once './global.php';

I then created an Article Bot user who should search for the rss feed:
http://news.yahoo.com/rss/

And set the post interval to 1 min and waited. So far nothing has been posted.

In my article bot manager the next feed is due at 7:01 am (despite having set the interval to 1 mins) and although I installed it last night, and 7:01 am has been and gone still there are no posts.

I must have missed something in "Routinizing your article bots" but have checked and re-checked.

Any thoughts?

you need to send it to a specific rss url i.e http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories

any assist with rss2 not working.??