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.

[kylek]

Originally Posted by kylek

That is what they told me when I asked, oh well,
I know how to fill out the task except for the bottom box called file name. All my other various tasks have ./includes/cron/ and then whatever file you are pointing to, so would I need to have ./includes/cron/articlebot.php?

And what do I need to put in articlebot.php for the forum server path?

I appreciate the help as a newbie still but trying to learn.

Still cant get this to work using scheduled tasks. When I use ./articlebot/articlebot.php for the filename and manually run the scheduled task everything seems to work, page pops up with one word on it "articlebot" and nothing else, any ideas?

[NewOrder]

Warning: chdir(): No such file or directory (errno 2) in /articlebot/articlebot.php on line 42

^^ this is what im still getting

for the place to point articlebot.php im using :
/home/tek/public_html/

[topten]

no matter what rss feed I try to add to my bot I get

Error: There is no file located at ....

anyone got any suggestions for me please?

[topten]

Originally Posted by topten

no matter what rss feed I try to add to my bot I get

Error: There is no file located at ....

anyone got any suggestions for me please?

I have tried about 20 different feeds includign yahoo news feeds which i validated with a feed validator to make sure

I really am at a loss here

[poolking]

Could you give people a chance to answer you before bumping your post.

Have you tried this page?

http://news.yahoo.com/rss

[topten]

Originally Posted by poolking

Could you give people a chance to answer you before bumping your post.

Have you tried this page?

http://news.yahoo.com/rss

Error: There is no file located at http://news.yahoo.com/rss

[poolking]

are you actually typing in the link to the XML files?

I was just telling you where the feeds are located.

[topten]

well gee man instead of trying to come down on me for simply adding a bit of extra info to the post you could have read what I added and we could avoided all this.

Originally Posted by topten

I have tried about 20 different feeds includign yahoo news feeds which i validated with a feed validator to make sure(

[wmturkey]

This is a GREAT hack and is working well for me -- many thanks to the author and those here supporting it.

[topten]

Originally Posted by wmturkey

This is a GREAT hack and is working well for me -- many thanks to the author and those here supporting it.

no doubt man , so what news rss feed are u using if i may ask?