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.

[bishop93]

Is there anyone that can tell me how to resolve this error that I posted above?

Thanks!

[bishop93]

Yet one more thing. Is this normal?

[memobug]

I suggest you both start with a feed that is known to work. There are quite a few variables and if you try to solve everything at once you might not succeed.

Here's one that works for me:

http://www.bonsai-today.com/rss/bonsai-today-rss.html

2. Nothing will happen unless the Article Bot is enabled and associated with a user. Did you create a user and assign the article bot to a user?

Advanced Settings - Leave all that regex stuff blank for now.

3. Did you configure the RSS Feed?

Mine for the feed listed above is

ID:1
http://www.bonsai-today.com/rss/bonsai-today-rss.html
Forum: General - choose your own forum
Icon ID: 1
RSS Label: [Bonsai-Today]
Post Interval: 1500 ***See note below***
Fetch Limit: 1
# Skip: 0
Build Similar Thread: Yes
Skip articles that don't contain descriptions: Yes
Enabled: Yes
Advanced Stuff: All Blank

***Nothing will happen until the 1500 minutes elapse, so set it to some low value for testing, like 60 minutes or 5 minutes if you're impatient

Set up your cron. I am using Cpanel X with Cron Jobs:

Click the Cron Jobs icon and choose Standard.

Command to run:

php /home/~user/public_html/forum/articlebot/articlebot.php

You need your full, absolute path here. My path won't work for you.

Minutes: 0
Hour(s): Every Hour
Day(s): Every Day
Month(s): Every Month
Weekday(s) Every weekday

You won't get any posting if

*you use a bad feed
*mess up on the cron path or don't have any cron
*don't attach a feed to a robot
*don't attach a robot to a userid
*set too long a time period
*choose the wrong forum for posting

Summary: Get it working with a known good RSS first, then you can experiment with others.

Regards,

Matt

[bishop93]

Yup. Got it. I have a second feed (from the same source, I might add) that works. The first one continues to give the error that I posted above. Now, if it's a bad RSS feed, great. But if there is a way that I can work with what I have and figure out what's messing up the feed in one RSS that isn't messing it up in the other.

Here's the kick though. The same RSS feed that is messing up with this bot, works through different mod (for a CMS, not a forum) and pulls the feed just fine without error. So ... is there a way around this? I'm hoping. I'm watching this mod actually work with one feed.

[bishop93]

Okay. Also, in the RSS Admin, I'm see that the Post Total equals 93, but there's only 4 posts and I'm quite sure they are from the functioning RSS feed (since I can see those posted). That would leave 89 posts somwhere. Where? I got a different report this time when I changed my cron function from what was listed in the install.html to what you have above (with my own foum path, of course). Now I this:

X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.9
Set-Cookie: emplastvisit=1103166001; expires=Fri, 16-Dec-05 03:00:01 GMT; path=/
Set-Cookie: emplastactivity=1103165101; expires=Fri, 16-Dec-05 03:00:01 GMT; path=/
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

Different than the MagpieRSS error, but still not something that I understand. If it's not the Magpie error, where are the posts?


Edit: The second report just came in. Now it's back to both the above code AND the original code.

X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.9
Set-Cookie: emplastvisit=1103166301; expires=Fri, 16-Dec-05 03:05:01 GMT; path=/
Set-Cookie: emplastactivity=1103166001; expires=Fri, 16-Dec-05 03:05:01 GMT; path=/
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

<br />
<b>Warning</b>:  MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (not well-formed (invalid token) at line 4524, column 35) in <b>/home/xxxn/public_html/xxx/articlebot/rss_fetch.inc</b> on line <b>230</b><br /> <br />
<b>Warning</b>:  array_reverse(): The argument should be an array in <b>/home/xxxn/public_html/xxx/articlebot/articlebot.php</b> on line <b>137</b><br /> <br />
<b>Warning</b>:  Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in <b>/home/xxx/public_html/xxx/articlebot/articlebot.php</b> on line <b>141</b><br />

[memobug]

Two ideas for you now

It sounds like it is incompatible with the importer for one reason or another. A couple things you might try

1. Validate the RSS feed and see if it passes validation
2. Post the url to the feed and ask someone else to try importing it using their vbArticle Bot
3. Be very careful with the board you select. The robot has the capability to post to any forum, including boards that are not "forums," boards that are permissions excluded to ordinary users, boards that don't accept posts and boards that are otherwise closed. Tell the robot to post and it will post, whatever the circumstances.

Regards,

Matt

[bishop93]

Okay. Let me ask this. The Advanced area that does replacements. I think I can see the problem. One feed validates but with "potential issues" -- therefore it posts. The other does not validate but because it doesn't like the & or \ in various places. Is the replacement aspect that I see there a way to replace these characters with something more "friendly"? Or am I way off here?

BTW, I want to add this in here as I start to actually simmer down. Thank you. You've been an incredible help in this process.

[memobug]

I think those regular expression fields are provided to "Clean up" various tags left in posts after they are imported and parsed. You could try making replacements, but I think that's after the fact. Maybe you should contact whomever is providing the feed and tell them that their feeds aren't validating.

Regards,

Matt

[bishop93]

The problem is that they don't care. Sad, but true. I'll try the replacement today and see what happens.

[j_86]

Any way to stop "Unknown Location" in the Who's Online list?

I've set it up, and got it working for Crontab.