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.

[Lionel]

I am wondering, using the who's online hack I display "getting the articles..." for location instead of /var/www/etc../.../articlebot.php. Is there a way to make it display a name instead of "Guest" ?

[venomx]

Originally Posted by Torqued

I have encountered an interesting post display order issue...

I have one of my articlebots retrieve 5 articles at a time, when it does that, the posts displayed @ forumdisplay are ordered like this:

http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105

The problem with that is that the 5th post down is really the most recent post. This is a little confusing because @ the index.php, the thread "t=105" is shown as the "Last Post", but once the user enters the forum (forumdisplay.php), the thread "t=101" appears to be the most recent/last posted thread.

Any ideas on how to get bot to enter the posts in the correct order?

I noticed this too a while back... noone offered a way to fix it.

[Torqued]

Originally Posted by berberber

Hi, it is quite cool .... one thing i dont understand is why it does not work with the cron system of VB ? is there a way to do that ?

I have the articlebot running via a vB Scheduled Task. The thing you have to remember about the scheduled tasks is that it's not a "real" cron job - it depends on activity on your forum to kick it off.

[Torqued]

Originally Posted by iKwak

Is that true?
I receive the google e-mails about the topic that I like and wanted to setup with the Article Bot hack.

I thought some other member in this thread (few pages earlier) mention that it does work. I should look back and post.

You may want to take a look at the NNTP Gateway for Usenet ( Newsgroups ) & Mailing Lists mod. I am using the gateway to import emails instead of newsgroups and it works great. I have created several different email addresses @ my domain for the different categories of news/information that I am receiving emails for.

[bondjetta]

I've found an interesting (and yet aggrevating) issue w/ Article Bot...

I'm pulling RSS from this URL:

www.zenguide.com/rss/generator.cfm?content=stories&category=10&code=XXXXXXXXX

which I have edited to remove my access code (sorry guys, register and you can have one too )

HOWEVER here is what Article Bot is storing (due in part possibly to storing it as rendered html?)

www.zenguide.com/rss/generator.cfm?content=stories&category=10&code=XXXXXXXXX

You might see the problem: namely the & instead of & as a result of this I cannot pull RSS from any of the feeds on this site (seeing as they require the category and code to access them.

Is there a quick way I can get around this? I'm going to try to investigate the storage of the RSS URL when I get home, but perhaps someone has some insight before I start?


EDIT: i used [code ] tags for the url's in hopes that they wont render as real links simply so you can see the & issue

[bondjetta]

and...i figured it out thanks to some input from Ianomed I have yet to find a URL that this has an adverse affect on, but if someone finds one please let me know

How To:
1) Open /admincp/articlebot_admin.php
2) Do a find for:

PHP Code:

    print_input_row('<b>RSS File Path</b><br />URL to the RSS XML feed.', 'rss_path', $rss_feed['rss_path']); 


And replace with:

PHP Code:

    print_input_row('<b>RSS File Path</b><br />URL to the RSS XML feed.', 'rss_path', html_entity_decode ($rss_feed['rss_path'])); 


Save and upload Pretty simple, it uses html_entity_decode to convert the html entities to their applicable characters. It's working for me so far and is rendering valid URL's now!

[vfxtalk]

Awesome work ...few questions...

Is there anyway to control the style of the text etc ?

Is there any possibility to have the ability to include images if they are available ?

Cheers

Paul

[Neobud]

Hello. Seemingly basic question (since nobody has asked it in 28 pages).

How do I add the articlebot_post template. Is it the 'vbulletin-style.xml' page that I alter? If so, what does the code look like?

Thanks. I'm very new to VB.

[trackpads]

Originally Posted by Neobud

Hello. Seemingly basic question (since nobody has asked it in 28 pages).

How do I add the articlebot_post template. Is it the 'vbulletin-style.xml' page that I alter? If so, what does the code look like?

Thanks. I'm very new to VB.

No, just open the styles and templates and in the little pull down menu choose the "Add New Template".

-Jason

[Torqued]

I'm trying to import this XML feed:

http://news.biohealthmatics.com/feeds/rssnews.aspx

The link in the xml file looks lik this:

<link>http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041117/law061_1.html</link>

but I'm getting a malformed URL like this on import:

http://<br%20/>http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041117/law061_1.html<br%20/>

Any ideas as to what is going on here and how I can fix it? I have several other feeds that are importing just fine.