NNTP Gateway (Usenet/Newsgroups)

This hack provides a gateway to any NNTP newsgroup such as those from Usenet and other newsgroup servers. Selected newsgroups are imported from your news server and post on the forum are sent out to the newsgroup. This hack was greatly inspired by fastforward's usenet gateway hack. This one is a complete rewrite of that hack written in PHP and works with vB 2.2.2.

Installation:
Installation is pretty simple. No modifications to the vB php files are needed and it simply consists of dropping in the files to your forums directory, running the SQL modifications, and modifying the newsgroup settings for your desired newsgroups. For the complete installation details, read the readme.txt file.

Here are some of the features:

• Real cool vbcode to text conversion!
• All posts are inserted, even if parent thread cannot be found for replies
• Guests posts also get sent to the newsgroup.
• Importing of attachments from the newsgroup
• Poll info sent to newsgroup
• Attachment link sent to newsgroup
• Supports unlimited newsgroups and servers.
• email notification of new replies, just like regular forum posts
• Can import HTML messages and convert to limited vb code.

For control panel integration, please check out GameCrash's Graphical Interface addition.

What's not in it that was in fastforward's usenet gateway hack:

• No control panel integration at the moment. (Available separately)
• Does not support separate footers
• Does not allow custom email address to be used via the users option
• No spam control or string replacement support.
• No purging or autoexpire.

There is still lots that I'd like to add to it, but this is competely functional for basic newsgroup gateway support. It is most likely not free of bugs. If you have questions, suggestions or annoyances, please post in this thread.

vb3 support
lierduh modified this to provide support for the beta versions of vb3. When the release candidates of vb3 come out, I plan to add support for vb3 and add other features to this hack. If you have suggestions for new features, let me know.

E-mail gateway support
New in this version, you can now gateway with an email list. This will fetch emails from a POP email account and send via php's mail function to the mailing list's email address. To set up the list, in the newsgroup field, enter in the email address to send outgoing posts to. In the server field, enter in the pop3 server, and in the username and password fields enter in, you guessed it, the username and password to your pop account. Note: the email gateway capabilities has not been fully tested, so it might not work with your POP server. Also, it does not work in combo with a news<->forum gateway in the same forum (you can use either kind though in differnet forums within your forums).

[allan grossman]

lierduh, I know your vb3 version on page 44 is a work in progress, but I've identitied a couple problems with the 'quote' function that I have no idea how to fix since all I do is install this stuff, not write it

First, the whole 'Originally posted by' line doesn't work and I don't know why. I know you wanted to change the text to "xxx wrote:" but that doesn't work either.

The routine does put *two* > characters at the head of the quote with a random character between them (I've seen 'e' and an apostrophe) but the quoted person's name is missing from the post.

I'm gonna play with this some tomorrow but I think I'm way out of my league.

One more question - I use "{1} said..." instead of the default. Can you help me a little if you have time?

[stroke25]

Heres the error im getting when running gateway.php (using gateway file from pg.44)

---------------------------------------------------------
1 group(s) gatewayed. Logging in to news.XXXXXXXXXXX.com, group control.XXXXxXX

Database error in vBulletin 3.0.0 Release Candidate 2:

Invalid SQL: SELECT post.postid,post.username,post.userid,post.datelin e,post.pagetext,post.showsignature,post.ipaddress, thread.pollid,thread.title,post.threadid,post.atta ch,thread.forumid FROM thread,post WHERE post.isusenetpost=0 AND thread.threadid=post.threadid AND post.dateline=thread.dateline AND post.userid=thread.postuserid AND (thread.forumid=36)
mysql error: Unknown column 'post.isusenetpost' in 'where clause'

mysql error number: 1054

----------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: Thanks for the reply i did miss a step in nntp.sql

Everything seems to be working good now.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by stroke25

Heres the error im getting when running gateway.php (using gateway file from pg.44)

mysql error: Unknown column 'post.isusenetpost' in 'where clause'

mysql error number: 1054

----------------------------------------------------------

This means you do not have the "isusenetpost" field in your "post" table. You might like to make sure the nntp.sql (? comes with the original file) is run.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by allan grossman

lierduh, I know your vb3 version on page 44 is a work in progress, but I've identitied a couple problems with the 'quote' function that I have no idea how to fix since all I do is install this stuff, not write it

One more question - I use "{1} said..." instead of the default. Can you help me a little if you have time?

I will have a look.

[limey]

FYI this has been working flawless on RC2 afraid to upgrade to RC3

[lierduh]

I have uploaded a new gateway.php to page 44.

"Xxxx Wrote:" is working now. I have also added the ability to strip the [font=xxx] tags.

Alan, I am not quite sure what you meant about {1} Said.

In vB3, the quote text works by using this tag:

PHP Code:

[QUOTE=Username]Text[/QUOTE] 


Where the Username is the user who sent the original quoted text.

I am only running RC2 at the moment. A quick browse through RC3 release note indicated very little difference between them. So I think the script should work with RC3.

[allan grossman]

Never mind - it looks like you picked a whole different way of doing the quote thing - I tested it and it works just fine.

Thanks!

[allan grossman]

One thing, though -

Since I upgraded to the new script there's some weirdness in the "last post" column on forumhome - the thread links on forumhome point to the wrong thread. Everything else works just fine

You can check it out on http://ebassist.com - you don't need an account to read.

thanks, lierduh - if there's anything I can do to help you with this please don't hesitate to holler.

[lierduh]

Uploaded a fixed gateway_RC2.zip on page 44.

Thanks for finding out the problems, Alan.

A few other things I need to work on include:

* Further strip all BB tags before sending the local posted posts to Usenet. This should include the custom BB codes
* Table prefix workability
* Email notification for new Usenet posts

...

I will keep working on it bit by bit unless Gilby releases the official vB3 version of gateway.php

[allan grossman]

Um - that didn't fix it? Mine's still got thread titles mixed up

What you've got so far is working just great. All I found was that one little glitch. Let me know if I can help - I'm not a coder but I'm a heck of a tester.

My gateway runs every ten minutes - you can check it out anytime you like

cheers -

[lierduh]

It will fix itself up after a new usenet post is retrieved. Let me know if the problem persists. (don't tell me I uploaded the wrong one).

[allan grossman]

The gateway's already picked up a few posts and the thread title still isn't working.

You might wanna check version numbers - at least it'll be an easy fix

[lierduh]

Please check around line 274. It should be like this:

PHP Code:

    // update forum
                    $DB_site->query("UPDATE forum SET
                    replycount=replycount+1,lastpost='".$date."',".
                    "lastposter='".addslashes(from_name($message[from]))."',".
                    "lastthreadid=" . $threadid . " , " .
                    "lastthread='".addslashes($message[subject])."' WHERE ".
                    "forumid IN ($foruminfo[parentlist])"); 


and around line 364:

PHP Code:

                    // update the forum counts
                    $DB_site->query("UPDATE forum SET
                    replycount=replycount+1,threadcount=threadcount+1,".
                    "lastpost='".$date."',lastposter='".addslashes(from_name($message[from]))."',".
                    "lastthread='".addslashes($message[subject])."', " .
                    "lastthreadid= " . $threadid . 
                    " WHERE forumid IN ($foruminfo[parentlist])"); 


I just checked, I did upload the right one. I am wondering if your proxy server could give you an older version.

The lastthreadid is used for the front page link. Please check your database to see if that is updated each time a post is imported.

[allan grossman]

No proxy - I own the server

The line 364 section was different from what you just posted - here's what I had:

PHP Code:

                    // update the forum counts
                    $DB_site->query("UPDATE forum SET
                    replycount=replycount+1,threadcount=threadcount+1,".
                    "lastpost='".$date."',lastposter='".addslashes(from_name($message[from]))."',".
                    "lastthread='".addslashes($message[subject])."' WHERE forumid IN ($foruminfo[parentlist])"); 


I changed it to what you just posted.

[allan grossman]

But - it's still not working

Let me know what I can do to help, lierduh. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer but can follow instructions pretty well