NEW Modified RSS News Feed Hack

Hack originally posted by: Xyphen - RSS News Feed Hack
Modified by: wolfstream - Modified RSS News Feed Hack

I am posting this up as a new hack because of the major changes made to how the script works. Also, I didn't want people to get confused as to which one to download since there were 3 different versions on the original post.

Xyphen released the original version, then wolfstream modified the script and corrected some errors. After that, I modified wolfstreams version to change how posts were inserted. Now the post count will increase, posts will be able to be searched, and similiar threads will work.

RSS News Feed Hack for vB 3.0.x. As long as vBulletin doesn't change the database structure much, this should be good for the next release also, and those to come.

Allows you to have a live RSS news feed (such as one from Google or CNET) in a forum. The user that posts it will basically be a bot, which *should* only be used for posting the news, but you can even make it for a regular user.

Comments are welcome! Support provided through this thread.

Latest Version:
- 1.26 - for PHP 4.3.0 & above
- 1.26a - for PHP prior to 4.3.0

vBulletin Versions:
- 3.0.0
- 3.0.1

PHP Versions:
- > 4.3.0
- < 4.3.0

Installation Overview:
- Files to edit: (2) /admincp/index.php, /includes/functions_newpost.php
- Files to upload: (4) rss.php, admincp/rss_admin.php, includes/RSS/class.RSS.php, includes/RSS/rss_update.php
- Queries to run: (4) in rss_install.php

History:
Version 1.26 (23 June 2004 - Slapyo, Natch)
- listing of bot's more intuitive (Natch)
- hopefully fixed duplicate problem (Slapyo)
- stripped html tags from title and description (Slapyo)

Version 1.25 (12 May 2004 - Slapyo)
- fix for &quot; showing up
- logs action in scheduled task log if turned on

Version 1.24 (20 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- posts now deleted with delete_thread function
- post counts updated when using delete all news

Version 1.23 (14 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- added ability to delete bots
- cleaned up includes
- fix for PHP versions prior to 4.3.0 calling html_entity_decode()

Version 1.22 (13 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- duplicate posts problem fixed
- fix for problem with ' appearing as \'

Version 1.21 (12 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- bot will not be subscribed to posts now

Version 1.2 (11 April 2004 - Slapyo)
- posts now inserted with build_new_post function

Version 1.1 (28 March 2004 - wolfstream)
- file edits taken down to 1
- cron script included

Version 1.0 (28 January 2004 - Xyphen)
- original release

Common RSS Feeds:
- Yahoo!
- CNET.com
- BBC
- Wired News
- The Register
- Ars Technica
- All Headline News

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by SnowBot

Well the user i set up still has NOT appeared on whois online or posted

No db errors

Nothing, i have rechecked my install / file edits and everything is correct as far as i can see, just nothing is happening.

Any ideas?

Want me to set up an admin login so you can check ?

snowbot, the bot will not appear in the who's online. the bot never actually logs into the system, it just uses the user info to make the post. if you want i can take a look at it for you, no promises that i will find the error.

but you uninstalled it, then reinstalled the latest version correct? just want to make sure of that before i looked at anything. go ahead and PM me the information. then i will get back to you if i find anything. thanks.

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by rocket98

I will try this, thank you Slapyo !!!!

rocket98

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

I am at a complete loss ... I was playing and playing and then I uploaded the attached file and for some reason I got a BBC feed immediately after doing a manual run, no dups nothing just a BBC feed with 30 threads.

I think this was from the original hack. I found it on hotscripts today when i was looking around at all things RSS.

I honestly don't know what is different from your edits to the original hack. No PHP problems to speak of. Not sure if this works for others but i tried it and it seems to go ...

Here is my forum

http://bocastown.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=51

rocket98, that appears to be the original script. the problem i found with the original script is that when submitting the post, it is done manually. that way you will not be able to search the threads, similar threads won't work, and post counts will not increase properly.

what are the errors you are getting. if you want, PM me your email address and i will send you the rss_update.php file that you need. i read back and see that you need the one that is compatible with a version of PHP prior to 4.3.0 ... lemme know, i will send it to you.

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by dethfire

I have my cron set to every 20 hours, however once that 20 hours comes around the script seems to run 3 times creating 3 sets of duplicated

what is your feed that you are using? i haven't seen this error before, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening. it should load the rss file once then parse it, that's it.

[rocket98]

Originally Posted by Slapyo

rocket98, that appears to be the original script. the problem i found with the original script is that when submitting the post, it is done manually. that way you will not be able to search the threads, similar threads won't work, and post counts will not increase properly.

what are the errors you are getting. if you want, PM me your email address and i will send you the rss_update.php file that you need. i read back and see that you need the one that is compatible with a version of PHP prior to 4.3.0 ... lemme know, i will send it to you.

I'm hosted for Free on 1and1. On this particular server they are running php 4.2.3. After a couple of enquiries to support there I'm sad to say "non paying" customers have to put up with what they get for the free accounts.

I still had errors with redeclaring of htmlentities as shown here after following the instructions you provided in the update.

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare unhtmlentities() (previously declared in /homepages/23/d95339147/htdocs/public_html/forum/includes/RSS/rss_update.php:76) in /homepages/23/d95339147/htdocs/public_html/forum/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 76

I would like to have this work and do appreciate your efforts.

Thank you
rocket98

[Michael Morris]

I tried to run this and got this error message...

Warning: file(http://www.wizards.com/rss.asp?x=dnd): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error in /http/forums/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 32

Warning: implode(): Bad arguments. in /http/forums/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 32

All Done

[mirdin]

Originally Posted by Slapyo

$rss_title = str_replace(""", "\"", $rss_title);
$rss_description = str_replace(""", "\"", $rss_description);

Also had the same issue with &quot; showing up, now I've added these lines, hope that works

Apart from that everything seems to work nicely so far.
Great job!

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by Michael_Morris

I tried to run this and got this error message...

Warning: file(http://www.wizards.com/rss.asp?x=dnd): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error in /http/forums/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 32

Warning: implode(): Bad arguments. in /http/forums/includes/RSS/rss_update.php on line 32

All Done

that rss feed appears to not work for me. when i follow that link i just get a blank page. that might be the cause of your problem. in fact, i went through all of their RSS feed links and none of them would load up for me. the reason it is not working, is more that likely something on their end. none of their rss feeds will load up.

[VodkaFish]

Is this hack for a single rss feed?

[Slapyo]

you can set up as many bots/rss feeds as you want.

you could use the same bot over and have it post a different feed in a different forum. or whatever you want.

[Morrus]

Originally Posted by Slapyo

you can set up as many bots/rss feeds as you want.

you could use the same bot over and have it post a different feed in a different forum. or whatever you want.

This hack seems to be working fine!

Is there a way to change the formating of the output, though? Rather than a line break and then "View the entire article", can it be set to just append "(Read more...)" at the end of the text (no line breaks)?

[ConqSoft]

Suggestion for a future version: Ability to give a descriptive name to the feed. If you use the same userid to post multiple feeds, they all show up the same in the dropdown.

Also, ability to delete a feed would be nice.

Good work!

[gmarik]

This seems even better...

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by Morrus

This hack seems to be working fine!

Is there a way to change the formating of the output, though? Rather than a line break and then "View the entire article", can it be set to just append "(Read more...)" at the end of the text (no line breaks)?

if you want to change the output of the feed, just open up rss_update.php

FIND:

PHP Code:

$rss_description = $rss_allItems[$j][DESCRIPTION];
$rss_description .= "{br}{br}[url=" . $rss_allItems[$j][LINK] . "]View the Entire Article[/url]{br}"; 


REPLACE WITH:

PHP Code:

$rss_description = $rss_allItems[$j][DESCRIPTION];
$rss_description .= " [url=" . $rss_allItems[$j][LINK] . "](Read more...)[/url]{br}"; 


you can format it however you like. but this is the section where you would modify the formatting of the post itself. note, you use the {br} tag to create breaklines, not the standard <br /> tag.

[Slapyo]

Originally Posted by ConqSoft

Suggestion for a future version: Ability to give a descriptive name to the feed. If you use the same userid to post multiple feeds, they all show up the same in the dropdown.

Also, ability to delete a feed would be nice.

Good work!

ya, i noticed this problem too ... but now that i pretty much have the insertion of the post going good i can work on additional features for it.

[sjau]

Hmmmm, good work to have opened a new thread with a fixed version