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.

[RyanDe680]

All I am getting are advertisements so far, even though in the XML feed I can see the articles relevant to what I would want posted

[Yup]

I installed this, followed everything the way it said to, and yet there is no option to the left of my admin cp.

There isnt an article bot settings box

any help?

[Yup]

Forget about that, I guess i didnt refresh..

however now i have a new problem

i set up everything through all the steps put the include for articlebotphp in my index

and put the correct path to server in the articlebot.php

but when i go and try to execute articlebot.php i get a blank screen

also it isn't posting any threads or rss feeds

[RyanDe680]

Originally Posted by Yup

Forget about that, I guess i didnt refresh..

however now i have a new problem

i set up everything through all the steps put the include for articlebotphp in my index

and put the correct path to server in the articlebot.php

but when i go and try to execute articlebot.php i get a blank screen

also it isn't posting any threads or rss feeds

If it results in a blank page when you go to http://www.yoursite.com/forum/articlebot/articlebot.php then that's good, it's working. Perhaps it could be the XML scripts that you are receiving (ie. the news source)?

For me all I have been getting are advertisements.

[Yup]

It just took sometime to grab it, I guess my only complaint now is that the threads that are being posted are only like a couple of sentences... instead of full articles

is anyone else experiencing that as well?

[darnoldy]

Originally Posted by Yup

the threads that are being posted are only like a couple of sentences... instead of full articles

is anyone else experiencing that as well?

Yep, everyone. That's the way RSS feeds are designed to work--they give a few-sentence description and a link to the full article.

--don

[Cloud Strife]

Is there any way to use regex to replace the link that is inside <link> </link> This link is being posted in the threads, but it is not the link to the full article. The link posts like this "http://www.thesite.com/short.php?id=12543" I want to replace it so it puts a link to "http://www.thesite.com/full.php?id=12543" I tried to do a regex for description in the admincp but it didnt work. Seems that it wont work for things embedded in a link tag. Any way to get it to work?

[ferrariengines]

I believe the entire logic of this script is absolutely wrong. Firstly, there is no code in articlebot.php which would cause it to loop for the specified interval time. Setting an interval appears to be useless, articlebot will grab the first item in the RSS and then wait until the cronjob fires it again to grab the second item, the interval setting is completely bypassed. The way I imagined functionality was as follows:

Say you have a RSS feed with 10 items that haven't been added to your forums. At whatever time you designated the cronjob to fire, the first item from the RSS is added to the forums. Because I have set the interval to 2 minutes, the next item is added 2 minutes later, etc. until after 20 minutes, all 10 items have been added to the forums, and execution stops. When my cronjob fires articlebot.php the next time it will check for any new items, and input them 1 at a time taking a 2 minute rest between items.

I believe this was the intention of the script, but there is no coding in articlebot.php to facilitate this. I am currently attempting to incorporate the correct interval structure into articlebot.php, however, it may prove to be difficult as I am having a hard time understanding the layout of this code as it appears to be completely linear without any reference to certain functions.

I will keep you guys updated.

[NxTek]

I haven't noticed most of what you mentioned, but I have noticed that it will grab a post in the "middle" of a feed as a new article.

The 3 biggest problems with this script as I see it are -

1, It doesn't correctly parse images in feeds to (img) vB code tags. I know the layout can't always match the original, but still displaying them would be nice.

2, It doesn't correctly parse <enclosure> tags into (url) vB code tags. This is most often used for Podcasts.

3, There is zero support for it. I've asked 7 questions in this thread and none have been answered. I'd even be willing to pay a few bucks for the script if support questions would get answered. Welcome to vB hacks I guess.

[ferrariengines]

Hi NxTek,
Does the interval system work for you, such as you specify an interval, and it will churn away posting a new message for each item based on the interval time? It is not possible from looking at the code... I wonder if I have a bad articlebot.php?