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.

[jcbatchelor]

Nevermind, duh, found it. I forgot to create the new articlebot_post template.

[MaXxed]

any help on how to uninstall this cleanly? the php mod and template are easy, but what about that SQL script in step5 of the install?

[Dorign]

Alright, I'm a newb, but .. I may have done it right? I may not have.. :P

First of all, I gave my "bot" permission to post in the restricted forum "Community Center," where Yahoo! news feeds will go. Second, I added three RSS feeds (Yahoo! Top Stories, Yahoo! US, and Yahoo! World). I ran "articlebot.php" but it didn't post anything. Is that normal?

As for the Cron Job thing, isn't that what vb3's scheduled task management system is? I set it to run articlebot.php every day at 9:15 am. Is that like cronning?

Ehm.. help? :P

[Dorign]

EDIT: Okay, so I still need to know if vB 3.0.8's scheduled tasker will work, but I've got the bot showing activity now.

My only question now is, it pulled advertisements from the selected XML's. Is that normal? I don't want to display ad's, I want to display important news.

[Mr.D]

Can someone answer is there gona be 3.5 version the coder hasent been here since Last Online:Mar 2005

[Dorign]

Hrmm, well it seems the scheduled tasker does indeed work as planned. Does anyone have any XML's for direct news they'd suggest? All I'm getting are advertisings.

[Gutspiller]

What is a good amount of time to set our cronjob to? In the instructions I saw 6-7 hours but was a little confused if that's the setting everybody should use or only super popular forums.

[sensimilla]

this is a beauty thanks *click install

[BeePee]

Originally Posted by popowich

Hello,

My article bot constantly posts duplicate threads. I have no other problems except for the posts that are reposted even though they appeared hours, days, or weeks earlier. I already updated my MySQL with the change to make the cache title be text instead of varchar as noted earlier in this thread. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thank you,
-Raymond

Had the same problem until I found out that I had forgotten to chmod 777 the cache folder...

[BeePee]

Originally Posted by MadMan

Can someone answer is there gona be 3.5 version the coder hasent been here since Last Online:Mar 2005

Hmm, I guess the answer is in your question m8. You'll have to find someone who does it for you or even better: do it yourself that way you'd learn a lot about vBull and php.