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.

[Jaxx]

Ok, i'm needing some input here.

I've tried several places on getting a feed for http://eq2players.station.sony.com/ and have yet to find one that is really good. The feed I use from g-blog (he custom makes them) is the best I have had so far. But still, I am unable to get the links IN the stories as they appear on the site.

All it shows is a link at the bottom of the story, and many times, I have to fix the formating since g-blog only does a html scrap.

You can see what I mean here: http://www.ahazi.org.

Any help would be appreciated.

[bane1]

OK,

I've been playing around with the regex replacements for the last 8 or so hours. I need HELP!!!!

I've figured out how to make single pattern replacements. i.e.
search: /patternA/
replace: valueB

This replaces patternA with valueB

Also
I've also got logical OR's pattern replacements working.

search: /patternA|patternB|patternC/
replace: valueD

This is great for replacing patternA and patternB and patternC with valueD

What I realy need help with, and I'm not even sure if it's possible, is multiple pattern matching with different values for each pattern match.

Example:

search: /patternA/, /patternB/ ,/patternC/
replace: patternA with valueD, patternB with valueE, patternC with valueF

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Chris

[Ruffneck]

LOL the users on my community, don?t like the bot...

[bishop93]

Originally Posted by 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.

Is there any way to resolve this? This would see to be an open loophole for boards that have guest restricted access. I'd like to keep the forums secure while still allowing the bot to post.

Otherwise, we continue to run problem free.

[mvulcan]

Originally Posted by Gandolfe

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /hsphere/local/home/williamk/cs-elite.net/forums/articlebot/articlebot.php on line 92

If you're running it from the console
/usr/bin/php /srv/www/blahblahblah/articlebot.php

you will need to uncomment the
chdir('/path to forums/');
require_once './global.php';

hope that helps.

[kadafi_alive]

Hi,

Does anyone know how to un-install this bot?

[j_86]

Yes.. work backwards through the installation process.

[kadafi_alive]

Originally Posted by JimpsEd

Yes.. work backwards through the installation process.

Actually, I do know how to reverse the applied insertions but I ran the install_v1-1.php which executes queries. I do not know to reverse that. I'd greatly appreciate it if you could help me out.

Thanks

[seidel]

Hi!, this is an excellent modification! but is not working for me...

I have vbulletin 3.0.1, install and change the paths in articlebot.php and setup CRON in my server...

The bot is not working, no write post... I need this RSS http://lists.upperdeck.com/read/rss?forum=judge-yu

please helpme!!!!

thanks in advance

[kadafi_alive]

Come on,

there has be to someone out there who knows how to un-install this hack. I'd greatly appreciate it!!!!!!!