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 anyway to have this bot as an "always signed in" user rather than a Guest? It would seem that certain settings that don't allow guests to actually read posts without being registered and signed in break this little hack. And it's been working so well up until now.

[H@K@N]

clicks *install*

Does somebody know, how i can prune automatically the posted Feeds ?

I don't like to remove them manually, if the BoT is posting 20 Posts/Day or even more ...

gr33tz

[Ruffneck]

This script is nice...but i have a little problem...

I´ve installed it sucesfull and running the articlebot.php on the browser...and the bot added the rss entrys on the board...with title and thread description...

I´ve added a include on the global.php
require_once('./articlebot/articlebot.php');

And edit the chdir('/path/to/forums/'); to the right real chdir... /var/www/html/blablala..../

The script add new Threads with the right title, but nothing thread self...the link to the thread from the index was unavaible...

I think the script has problems with the articlebot_post, because i saw a error with articlebot_post...

Why it´s first works fine and now...

[Ruffneck]

Here is the error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: fetch_template() in /var/www/blabla/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 259

This line is:
eval('$articlebot_post = "' . fetch_template('articlebot_post', 0, 0) . '";');

I´ve added this template and it works first time fine, but now...

[Firewire]

How do you do a CRON Job anyway?

I have CPANEL. I set it up, and I get this garbage:

/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 1: ?php: No such file or directory
/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 5: /aquota.user: Permission denied
/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 6: syntax error near unexpected token `|'
/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 6: ` | articlebot.php, v1.1, 07/25/04 |'

I checked the permissions of the file to make sure it was executable. This is what I put into the CRON JOB scheduler line as the location:

/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php

Any ideas?

[Torqued]

Originally Posted by Firewire

How do you do a CRON Job anyway?

I have CPANEL. I set it up, and I get this garbage:

/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 1: ?php: No such file or directory
/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 5: /aquota.user: Permission denied
/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 6: syntax error near unexpected token `|'
/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php: line 6: ` | articlebot.php, v1.1, 07/25/04 |'

I checked the permissions of the file to make sure it was executable. This is what I put into the CRON JOB scheduler line as the location:

/home/xxxx/public_html/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php

Any ideas?

I had the same problem and was unable to figure it out. So I made 4 scheduled vB tasks to run the article bot @ 0, 15, 30, and 45 mins every hour.

[Firewire]

Cool! I'll try that!

[memobug]

Originally Posted by Firewire

How do you do a CRON Job anyway

I documented a cpanel cron setup back here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=441

Looks like you are missing the php command and *nix has no idea what to do with it, so it is trying to interpret it (your php file) as a series of shell commands.

Regards,

Matt

[Booth]

Since installing this, my forum has been running very slow... :ermm:

[paulz]

Originally Posted by Booth

Since installing this, my forum has been running very slow... :ermm:

how often did you set the scheduled task to run? this would load down a server if set too frequently.