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]

actually rss_bot_1.23a is for people with a PHP version prior to 4.3.0 and you have PHP above 4.3.0 ... you should use rss_bot_1.23 .... but either way, it is working. they should work, it's just that the in rss_bot_1.23 i use a function that was not introduced till 4.3.0 and so i had to insert a workaround.

rss_bot_1.23 - normal
rss_bot_1.23a - workaround for PHP prior to 4.3.0

the workaround obviously works for either PHP above and below 4.3.0.

[Aleksey]

I don't get it... what do I put for "Source"?

[Slapyo]

you find a rss news feed. in my first post announcing this hack i listed a few different rss news feeds.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=63798

i'm using the yahoo sports news feed for my site. but you can use whatever feed(s) you would like to on your site. you can have more than one.

[Aleksey]

I mean like do I put in "Yahoo!" or I put in url?

[Slapyo]

oh, you would put in the URL to the RSS feed.

[Aleksey]

Would that be http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/music or http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss

[Slapyo]

the music one. it has the data that you want. you can tell when you open the link to the rss feed up in the browser.

[Aleksey]

Alright and it runs every hour, is there anyway I can manualy run it so I can see if it works or not?

EDIT: Sorry for all these question, I'm kind of retarded.

[Slapyo]

yes, once you have set up your cron job in the scheduled tasks manager. you can open up the scheduled tasks manager and tell the cron job to run now. there is a button to the far right on every line for every cron job.

[Aleksey]

thanks a lot

[Aleksey]

Another thing, is there anyway to make it post whole article? Like look http://www.digitalwebforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=19 it posts just stupid 2 lines of news and then says "View whole article here" I want it to post whole articles without those links, is that possible?

[Slapyo]

nope. the news feed would have to have the entire article in it. that leaves it up to the website producing the news feed. some news feeds have longer descriptions than others. but most don't include the whole article.

[Aleksey]

Ehh then this is useless...

[dethfire]

I still get duplicates from yahoo rss, using 1.23

[Slapyo]

hm, i'm not getting duplicates and i am using yahoo. which feed are you using from yahoo?