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

[58sniper]

Originally Posted by ToddW

How come MoreOver doesn't use a PUB Date Field? Is there a way around this for MoreOver Feeds?

edit- Looks like since they 'refresh' every 15 minutes they don't find the need for a pubdate field ??? :ermm:

Because their feeds are RSS 0.91 feeds, and you typically don't see pubDate in 0.91 feeds.

Nothing you can do about it other than complain to MoreOver.

[rjerina]

i installed this, it did the first feed read, but it seems to not be finding new entries, or just not adding new entries?

using the feed http://rss.pcworld.com/rss/latestnews.rss

the most recent article should be "New Cool, Quiet Laptop Hard Drives", but the most recent is "Is XP's Fix Safe?"

not sure what is going on.

[58sniper]

Originally Posted by rjerina

i installed this, it did the first feed read, but it seems to not be finding new entries, or just not adding new entries?

using the feed http://rss.pcworld.com/rss/latestnews.rss

the most recent article should be "New Cool, Quiet Laptop Hard Drives", but the most recent is "Is XP's Fix Safe?"

not sure what is going on.

They don't have a pubDate field in their feeds. See https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=431

[rjerina]

Originally Posted by 58sniper

They don't have a pubDate field in their feeds. See https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=431

so i cant use this feed? thats a bummer

this sucks. i cant use the best pc computing news feed i have found thus far, because this thing needs pub dates? why doesnt it just check against titles or links. seems kind of lame and limited.

[58sniper]

Originally Posted by rjerina

so i cant use this feed? thats a bummer

this sucks. i cant use the best pc computing news feed i have found thus far, because this thing needs pub dates? why doesnt it just check against titles or links. seems kind of lame and limited.

If you read this entire thread, you'd know it's because without a pubDate field, the script doesn't know when it was released, and, thus, if it's new or not. Perhaps if PC Computing got off their @ss and came out with an RSS 2.0 feed, instead of using that 0.91 feed, the world would be a better place.

[rjerina]

<rss version="2.0">
-
<channel>
<title>PCWorld.com - Latest News Stories</title>
<link>http://www.pcworld.com</link>
<description>Latest news stories from PCWorld.com</description>

it is rss 2.0 they just decided not to do pubdate. maybe if this script didnt rely on times so much.

the script shouldnt be doing this by times anyways. what if two rss feeds come out at the exact same time? it ignores one or both? it should just compare the titles or urls.

[rjerina]

i may just scrap this thing and do this all in perl and just insert it right into the database, this is rediculous.

[58sniper]

It needs a timestamp so that it can tell if it was released since the last time it checked. Sure, the script could query the database and see if it's already there, but why introduce more overhead? It really frosts me when RSS feeds DON'T contain that data. It doesn't really cost more to have a more complete feed. And RSS clients can do so much more with the extra data.

[Slapyo]

it relies on times and titles. because yahoo will release the same article 40 minutes later and obviously you don't want 2 of the same post. but it needs the time because a compliant rss feed would have pubDate in it. try the article bot in the vBulletin Integration forum. i am not sure exactly how that bot works.

[rex_b]

when I run the task nothing happens.. just says

RSS Bot

[Slapyo]

that's all it should say. there is no output in the scheduled task manager besides that. threads should be created in your forum.

[Sooner95]

ah ha,, I am guessing that the other RRS news feed thread is dead and this one has the updates? lol

got me confused, I installed the other one..i should be ok tho, correct? can i reinstall this one over it and continue? thx

[Sooner95]

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: build_new_post() in /home/bulldog/public_html/forum/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 110

Ok, i get this... what am I missing?

[Sooner95]

nevermind, I used the OLD rss_update.php file and it works LOL

[Slapyo]

this rss news feed is a continuation of the other one in this forum.