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.

[manguish]

Well - for whatever reason - it is now working..... Why - i don't know.

One last thing - is it possible to change the link at the bottom of the thread from (for example) :

http://www.whatever.com

to :

Click here to read thie story

[KW802]

Manquish,

You lost me somewhere..... fps_external.php only deals with creating RSS feeds from your site, not to to it. Using or not using fps_external.php would have no affect on this hack unless you were using this hack to get feeds from somebody who happens to be using the fps_external.php hack.

For changing your URL, I think the template "articlebot_post" is what you're after. Try changing it to....

$article[description]
 
{b}{url="$article[link]"}Click here to read this story{/url}{/b}

.... but substitute "[" for "{" & "]" for "}" when you copy & paste it.

Kevin

[Blam Forumz]

Why does it only show a small description off the actual news? I saw on another vbulletin forum which grabs news and psots it in a selected forum, as well as ataches an image and the content in the post is alot longer

[buro9]

Originally Posted by Blam Forumz

Why does it only show a small description off the actual news? I saw on another vbulletin forum which grabs news and psots it in a selected forum, as well as ataches an image and the content in the post is alot longer

That sounds extremely interesting... what forum was this on if you don't mind my asking?

[Tenny]

I'm having the same problem as SportbikeWorld & bitg, anyone have ideas?

There is the post, the title, but when you click the thread link, nothing is there.

For example: http://www.tehlounge.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=82

Thanks!

[blueuniverse]

Originally Posted by Blam Forumz

Why does it only show a small description off the actual news? I saw on another vbulletin forum which grabs news and psots it in a selected forum, as well as ataches an image and the content in the post is alot longer

It all depends on the content of the XML/RDF/RSS File that you're grabbing. Some of them, have loads of details, and an image. Some don't.

[Blam Forumz]

Heres the forum: www.totalformat.com

and also, I use the same RSS Feed as they do, TheRegister!

Help :/

[Tenny]

blueuniverse: It's not the feed, I was using this exact same feed earlier yesterday with another RSS BOT for VBulletin, but I didn't like the way it was running, and came across this bot.

Blam Forumz: Wow, just looking at that one, and seeing they have the full article, they must be feeding off a special news rss link imo. Did you ask the admin how he did that by any chance? I'd be very interested also!

[jarekn]

I just installed it... mind you I have it link to the index.php page for now... IT works great... so far I've noticed that only one of the entries has been duplicated... we'll see how it is by tomorrow...

One question I have is that all the feeds are very short and contain a link to another site... I hate this as I am giving traffic away to others and not getting much for it...

My question is this, are there any feeds (pay is ok as long as its not a fortune) that would contain more info and maybe images? I am mostly interested in Entertainment feeds... like music, artists, reviews etc...

Any help would be very very much appreciated...

THANX

[KW802]

Originally Posted by Blam Forumz

Heres the forum: www.totalformat.com

and also, I use the same RSS Feed as they do, TheRegister!

Help :/

It looks more like that site is doing a cut & paste.