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.

Originally Posted by mobilephonegame

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

Thanks for the help. But I am getting a number of other errors now:

Fatal error:  Call to undefined function:  html_entity_decode()

So I think it will just have to go onto the backburner until I have more time to configure it.

[mobilephonegame]

try attached.
just add your own server paths etc, and upload again :-)

then add an rss feed for the bot, try this as it works on ours

http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline.../uk/rss091.xml

and make sure a forum is allocated for posts etc, and permissions set so reg user/bot can post etc

dont forget to add a template to the style you are using so that the post shows correctly..i.e

add template to current style, with the following

title: articlebot_post

template:

PHP Code:

$article[description] [b][url="$article[link]"]$article[link][/url][/b] 


see if that works

Originally Posted by mobilephonegame

try attached.

Thankyou. I am no longer getting the error message, but I am also not getting any news.

I am not using a crontab (don't know how ) so am calling the ArticleBot via:

include_once './articlebot/articlebot.php';

On the index.php page.

When doing this I am suppose to comment out

//chdir('/home/public_html/forums/');
 //require_once './global.php';

Or is this why I am not getting any feeds.

[Dez_U]

getting this error messages all over my forum

Warning: main(./articlebot/articlebot.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/index.php on line 419

Warning: main(): Failed opening './articlebot/articlebot.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/index.php on line 419

Warning: Unknown(./articlebot/articlebot.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/includes/functions.php(1955) : eval()'d code on line 1

Warning: (null)(): Failed opening './articlebot/articlebot.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/.sites/70/site4/web/forums/includes/functions.php(1955) : eval()'d code on line 1

[skorzguy]

I tried installing the Article bot for a while and can't get it to work. I would install using crotab but I don't know how to do this. It looks fine when I installed Article bot but it will not save any feeds and shows them as not valid in my admin panel.

Does one need to have the fopen wrapper on on the server. I need someone to install this hack for me using the crotab method, I will pay. contact me at SkorzGuy@allstarchat.com

[mobilephonegame]

ok i have this installed and running fine for rss feeds (see www.sellersforum.co.uk) live news etc...

but....the coding should accept rss2 type feeds..., but when i set them to rss2 it posts the title & link only..

it does this because rss text is inside "<description> </description>" tags

but rss2 is inside "<content:encoded> </content:encoded>

is there anyway, i could make it receive posts from rss2 i.e include text within <content:encoded> if so which files need editing.?

its supposed to be compatible with rss2, and may just need a small tweak, but im lost here folks, any point in the right direction would be gr8 :ermm:

[bjornstrom]

I installed the Articlebot without problems and it works like a charm. Incredible!

I would like to make a contribuion to the programmer, anyone with a paypal link?

/Martin

[mobilephonegame]

well ours works like a charm apart from not receiving rss2 feeds (like its supposed to do lol)

ive tried adding content:encoded to the template to see if thats why it wasnt adding the text/post etc, but nope, that just makes more errors... o well...

im running out of ideas, and might have to call on an experienced coder to help me out....

so have you tried retrieving rss2 feeds>? do they show ok.? i.s full text etc not just one line...

[DanGarion]

I would love this to work, but I get a blank page at the articlebot.php page and I get these errors.

Mon Sep 13 14:16:35 2004] [error] PHP Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/theprcco/public_html/vb/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 141
[Mon Sep 13 14:16:35 2004] [error] PHP Warning: array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in /home/theprcco/public_html/vb/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 137
[Mon Sep 13 14:16:35 2004] [error] PHP Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to fetch http://uo.stratics.com/php-bin/rss/raw.php. (HTTP Response: ) in /home/theprcco/public_html/vb/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc on line 230

[Robert Basil]

Running this via cron job.

Everything is running fine except I get the message titles posted ok, but nothing is posted in the message body (no link to the full article or description at all).

Yes I've added the articlebot_post template.

I've tried this with a bunch of different feeds with no luck. (Yes, I checked the feeds and they include a link and description)

Anyone else have this problem and come up with a solution?