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.

[DeadGaze]

hmm try to install but i get thiss error on my site
anyone knows what it is and get it to work

PHP Code:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: array_change_key_case() in rss_parse.inc on line 203 


[Benj]

this is prob a really stupid question but you cant do this hack with out setting up the cron job can you ??? bastard host (globat.com beware) dont support them for security reasons :disappointed:

[venomx]

You can always set up a VBcron...

[School-Help]

Still get blank threads posted by my BOT. Is no one ever going to help me.

[xtreme-mobile]

ive just installed this hack but my bot is not posting

am i doing something wrong?

ive gone into the set up bit and ive linked to all the code stuff for the feed but he dont post anything lol

any ideas?

[JsnakeJ]

Thanks. This hack is great.

[JsnakeJ]

You have to wait till the site updates.

[sub_ubi]

Great hack but a quick question:

Would it be possible to replace HTML with BB code using regex?

My favorite RSS uses a ton of HTML. I figure I can comment out or remove this line in articlebot.php:

$article['description'] = strip_tags(html_entity_decode($article['description']));

But how can I turn the HTML into BBcode with regex?

[TTG]

Originally Posted by benj

this is prob a really stupid question but you cant do this hack with out setting up the cron job can you ??? bastard host (globat.com beware) dont support them for security reasons :disappointed:

"The other methods are placing an include_once in your index.php file, or in your phpinclude_end template. In the former case an extra query will be called everytime your index.php is accessed, while in the latter an extra query is called on every page." ..

It's listed in the hack instructions.

[TTG]

Originally Posted by School-Help

Still get blank threads posted by my BOT. Is no one ever going to help me.

Did you create the new template .. ?