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.

[dorkus]

When I run the articlebot.php file from the command line, I get this error:

PHP Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference in /var/www/htdocs/forum/articlebot/rss_parse.inc on line 399

PHP version 4.3.3

Any ideas as to why it's happening and how to fix it?

[dnoyeb2002]

Hello Everyone,

This is a great hack but for some reason I can't get it to pull the feeds (I've been manually running the articlebot.php file every hour). This time though, I finally got an error message of:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: html_entity_decode() in /home/virtual/site7/fst/var/www/html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 242

Could someone possibly tell me what that is . . .

Thanks,

[dorkus]

I upgraded to PHP 4.3.10 RC, and I'm still getting the same error: PHP Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference in /var/www/htdocs/forum/articlebot/rss_parse.inc on line 399

I gave up. So I installed the other RSS feed article bot that was mentioned in this thread, and that works great so far. I'd recommend that if you are encountering this problem.

Velocd: thanks for the work you put into this hack. I wish it worked for me.

[snake-boy]

Just installed this now (Clicked Install), and am glad to say, it's working great. Excellent Hack! Thank you.

-snake

[ragintajin]

Originally Posted by RS25com

I am still getting this error:



I believe this issue has not been fully addressed yet. Can anyone shed some light or should I just ditch this and find something else?

Yup, I'm getting the same "Error: There is no file located" response...funny thing is it worked perfectly before I changed servers.

I know the settings are right because when I run the articlebot.php directly the timestamp in the AdminCP says so.

I know the feed I use (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/rss.xml) is fine too.

[leeman]

Hey, this looks neat....

Yes I know I should have read the posts....
But I'm on short timeshedule (SP?) to day and is there a way of making this mod pull diffrent RSS feeds to diffrent forums????

[Torqued]

Originally Posted by leeman

Hey, this looks neat....

Yes I know I should have read the posts....
But I'm on short timeshedule (SP?) to day and is there a way of making this mod pull diffrent RSS feeds to diffrent forums????

Yes. You can specify the forum for each RSS feed. And you can have multiple RSS feeds on a single bot, with each feed going to a separate forum.

[leeman]

Originally Posted by Torqued

Yes. You can specify the forum for each RSS feed. And you can have multiple RSS feeds on a single bot, with each feed going to a separate forum.

Cute !!!! :d

*LeeMan downloads and installs.

[leeman]

Installed but i don't get it to post...

Is there a way to check that it's getting the feeds...???
And i'm not using Cron, I use VB scheduler....

[Torqued]

When you run it the first time, it won't import anything. Then you will have to wait for the next scheduled run time for it to import any *new* articles since it checked the first time.. Use a frequently updated RSS feed (i like to use slashdot.org), set the RSS Post Interval to something like 15 mins, and only retrieve 1-2 articles at a time. This will allow you to fairly quickly validate that your feeds are working.